Pauline Tully

Pauline Tully (formerly Pauline Tully-McAuley; born 1970/1971) is an Irish Sinn Féin politician who has been a senator for the Cultural and Educational Panel since January 2025. She was previously a TD for Cavan–Monaghan from 2020 to 2024. She was a member of Cavan County Council for the Ballyjamesduff local electoral area from the 1999 election until 2012.

Early life Tully grew up on a farm in Kilnaleck, County Cavan, where she still lives. She is the second-youngest of a family of ten, and her father had been involved in the Irish republican movement since the 1950s. Several of her family members were Sinn Féin members during the 1970s and 1980s, and she has said that growing up in a border county made her conscious from an early age of the discrimination faced by the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. She has said that the 1981 H-Block hunger strikes had a profound effect on her as a child, and her family was involved in the campaign to elect Kieran Doherty as an Anti H-Block TD for Cavan-Monaghan. She joined Sinn Féin in 1997 after becoming involved in the campaign to elect Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, the first Sinn Féin candidate to be elected to the Dáil since 1957. She has since said that her husband's violence was also a factor in her decision to step back from politics at that time.

Political positions Ahead of the 2024 general election, Tully described her position on the political spectrum as left of centre, and named disability and carers as her main campaigning issue. On disability policy, she said that Sinn Féin would seek to modernise and strengthen the Disability Act 2005 and bring it into line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, alongside increased funding for disability services and supports. The couple had two sons, Pearse (born 2007) and Eoghan (born 2010). She was taken to hospital and spent time in intensive care, having sustained injuries that caused both of her lungs to fill with blood, though no vital organs were punctured. McAuley was subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison for the attack. In her victim impact statement, Tully said that she would "live a life haunted by what happened to me". She received counselling from a domestic violence service in Cavan-Monaghan, which she has said she found beneficial to her recovery.

McAuley was released from prison in June 2022 and later moved to Strabane, County Tyrone; he died in 2024 at the age of 59. Tully has said that his death brought her a sense of relief, given that he could no longer cause her or their sons harm.