It is a reflection of changing times in the North when a former officer commanding of the IRA in the Maze Prison is taking up a post funded by the EU's Special Programme for Peace and Reconciliation.
Twelve years ago Sean Lynch was tracked down in the Fermanagh countryside in possession of a rifle, after earlier escaping capture by the security forces in an incident in which his accomplice, Seamus Mc Elwain, was shot dead - a killing later deemed "unlawful" at an inquest.
Released from jail in October, Mr Lynch will take up his new post as development worker with the Fermanagh Prisoners' Dependants' Association from January. It is one of more than 100 projects in the county to have received "peace money" over the past two years.
His main task will be to run a resource centre where former prisoners can receive advice, information and training. The group has received funding, much of it from Europe, to buy a building in the centre of Enniskillen for this purpose.
Until next autumn, the project will be based in the small Border village of Roslea. Strongly nationalist, there is resentment there at British troops still patrolling the streets, and the permanent checkpoints and large barracks just outside the village. In these parts, there is no distinction made between those who died in 1798 and Seamus Mc Elwain - his name is included on a new memorial in the village.
Like all republicans who support the Belfast Agreement, Mr Lynch says former prisoners have "a major contribution to make to the building of peace and a new society". There are about 100 ex-IRA prisoners in Fermanagh, a very low figure compared to other counties.
"We want to help prisoners get meaningful work. In the past a lot of ex-prisoners have ended up in menial, low-paid jobs. These people have skills and they want to be able to use them the same as everybody else, and they want a space in society whereby that can happen," he says.
Mr Lynch gives the example of his girlfriend, a recently-released former OC of IRA women in Maghaberry Jail, who learned how to make furniture in prison. Many prisoners, he says, also gained computer skills and ALevel or degree qualifications. He hopes some may be able to start a business together and is also demanding the abolition of regulations barring ex-prisoners from teaching.
Throughout the Troubles, republicans and their families have not generally availed of state-supported counselling services. In the new centre they will not have that ideological problem to contend with. Mr Lynch says he wants people to get help with the issues he is now faced with. "When I went to jail, I had a oneyear-old son. He is a teenager now, and I have to try to get to know him. A whole new generation has grown up."
He accepts that many people in Fermanagh, particularly Protestants, would have great difficulty in accepting that he could play any role in reconciliation. "I know how some people might view me - it's understandable and it will take a while, but these are the people who ruled our lives, and for generations before held power and denied us everything. We have far more reasons why we shouldn't talk, but we will get nowhere by that."
He believes things can change and the current situation in the Maze prison is evidence of this. When he was OC in 1994, the prison was run through "dialogue and co-operation" between inmates and prison officers, after earlier years of protest and conflict.
"You had men beaten and humiliated during the blanket protest, and `screws' killed by the IRA. This ran deep, and we were probably monsters to them, but through a process of dialogue and co-operation, that perception ebbed away and I think it can happen here too, but there must be dialogue, mutual understanding and respect."
He says he doesn't regret "getting involved in the struggle", but hopes that things will be different in the future. He wouldn't want the same life for his son.
There will be no "cross-community" aspect to his work but he says he believes there will be contacts at a higher level. He refers to a recent conference in Belfast, also attended by former loyalist prisoners.
However it is clear that on the ground reconciliation will take a long time. He says too many of the "causes of conflict" still exist and describes an incident one night recently when an RUC man at a checkpoint opened his car boot to search it, but refused to close it afterwards.
When asked if he could ever see the day when there would be meaningful reconciliation between him and the RUC man, he responds: "I see a need for a completely new police force. I do see in the long term that some sort of reconciliation has to come out of a peace process, but a new police force is vital in that process."