A HIGH-profile republican who carried out a brutal knife attack on his estranged wife has had his jail term increased.
Convicted Garda killer Pearse McAuley, originally from Strabane in Co Tyrone, was sentenced to eight years in December 2015 for the assault on Pauline Tully, who he stabbed 13 times in front of their two boys, aged seven and four.
McAuley pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, producing a knife and causing serious harm to Ms Tully at their former home in Kilnaleck, Co Cavan on Christmas Eve 2014.
The 50-year-old, with an address in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, had used a steak knife to attack Tully in an ordeal which lasted for several hours.
He was sentenced at Cavan Circuit Criminal Court to 12 years imprisonment with the final four suspended, taking into account his guilty plea and expressions of remorse.
However, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) applied for a review of the sentence.
On Monday, the Court of Appeal in Dublin found McAuley's eight-year jail term was "unduly lenient" and re-sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment with only the final two suspended.
The President of the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Seán Ryan, said the 12 year-sentence seemed "modest" in view of the "quite horrifying circumstances of his case" but the DPP had not appealed the headline sentence.
Instead, it had suggested the jail term of eight years was too lenient.
McAuley was one of the IRA men jailed for the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996.
In a victim impact statement read out during a previous court hearing, Ms Tully, a former Sinn Féin councillor, said she would be living in fear for the rest of her life.
