Maybe, but on the other hand, why didn’t the Brits go public with this at the time? They could have cut the legs out from under the IRA leadership if they said that they’d agreed to the demands but the IRA was still telling the hunger strikers to keep on.
Good point. I'm sure someone better informed than I could address that question with a reasonable response.
However, it would still be speculative, as all our responses to the contentions of this article are speculative: the fact that what is proposed is reasonable/possible does not mean that it's the truth of the historical situation.