Dolours Price, the IRA Old Bailey bomber who later became a bitter critic of Sinn Féin's peace strategy, has been found dead at her home in north Dublin.

The Garda Síochána are investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of the former Irish republican icon in her apartment in Malahide, although she had been in general ill health.

Republican sources confirmed to the Guardian that the former IRA member, 62, who was once married to the Hollywood actor Stephen Rea, had died at her home.

Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey in 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to one person's death of heart failure. The ex-IRA prisoner, who went on hunger strike with her sister Marion in the 1970s and was subjected to forcefeeding in English prisons, had struggled with alcohol problems later in life.

She became an arch-critic of Gerry Adams, claiming the Sinn Féin president had ordered her to have one of the most famous victims of the IRA – Jean McConville – abducted from her west Belfast home, murdered across the border in the Republic and buried in secret in 1972.

Price alleged that she was given the task of driving McConville, a widow, away from her 10 children in the Divis flats complex to her death on the County Louth coast. McConville became the most famous of the "Disappeared" – IRA victims whom the organisation killed and buried in secret during the Troubles.

Price claimed Adams had set up a secret IRA unit in Belfast to weed out informers, both in its ranks and within the wider nationalist community, who were helping the security forces. The Sinn Féin Louth TD, one of the key architects of the Northern Ireland peace process, has consistently denied her allegations.

In an interview with CBS television in the US last year, Price repeated her claims about Adams and McConville. She said: "I drove away Jean McConville. I don't know who gave the instructions to execute her. Obviously it was decided between the general headquarters staff and the people in Belfast. Gerry Adams would have been part of that negotiation as to what was to happen to her.

"I had a call one night and Adams was in a house down the Falls Road and she had been arrested by Cumann [the IRA's female unit] women and held for a couple of days. She got into my car and as far as she was concerned she was being taken away by the Legion of Mary to a place of safety.

"It wasn't my decision to disappear her, thank God. All I had to do was drive her from Belfast to Dundalk. I even got her fish and chips and cigarettes before I left her."

Price was unrepentant about her alleged role in the disappearance and death of McConville.

Marion Price, also a fierce critic of the direction the IRA and Sinn Féin took during the peace process, is in Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland, facing terrorist-related charges.