Pearse McAuley has been sentenced to 12 years with four suspended for an attack on his estranged wife last Christmas Eve during which she was stabbed 13 times in front of their children.
He had pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, producing a knife and causing serious harm to Pauline Tully McAuley at their home at Kilderry, Kilnaleck, Cavan, on 24 December last year.
Ms Tully McAuley, a former Sinn Féin councillor, told the court the incident had a horrific effect on their five and seven-year-old sons and that she would be living in fear for the rest of her life.
Judge John Aylmer said the horror of the matter did not require repetition and Ms Tully had acted most courageously and with the utmost dignity.
In her victim impact statement, Ms Tully said she was treated "worse than an animal" and began praying as she was convinced she was going to die.
She recalled the "bewilderment and fear" of their two boys and said they are still having nightmares about their father killing their mother and are receiving counselling.
She told the court last Friday that McAuley turned up drunk and uninvited at her home at 11am last Christmas Eve.
She said when she opened the door he punched her in the face in front of their children and accused her of being with another man.
The court heard McAuley then pulled a steak knife out of his tracksuit bottoms and dragged her into the kitchen - where for the next two and a half hours he stabbed her repeatedly even as she lay on the floor.
At one stage she said he told the children to say goodbye to their mother.
It was only when he began to fall asleep that she managed to crawl to a neighbour who did not recognise her because of her injuries.
Commenting after the sentencing, Ms Tully said she was relieved the case was over and she was looking forward to planning a good Christmas for her two boys and herself.
She said she felt lucky that the outcome was not "an awful lot worse" and that she wanted to encourage other victims of domestic violence to come forward.
McAuley was a senior IRA gunman and highly regarded within Sinn Féin.
Along with Nessan Quinlivan he shot his way out of Brixton Prison in 1991 with a gun hidden in a shoe posted from Ireland.
He was there awaiting trial on charges related to an IRA plot to assassinate Brewery Chairman Sir Charles Tidbury.
He fled to Ireland and while on the run was part of the four-man gang that shot dead Detective Garda Jerry McCabe and wounded Detective Ben O'Sullivan in Adare, Co Limerick, in 1996.
Witnesses were too scared to testify in the murder trial in the Special Criminal Court. The four men were convicted of manslaughter with McAuley sentenced to 14 years in 1999.
Sinn Féin tried but failed to secure their release as part of the Good Friday Agreement and the gang served their time not in cells but in houses in the grounds of Castlerea Prison.
McAuley was granted special release in 2003 to marry Ms Tully, who that year also delivered messages from the prisoners to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis.
When he was freed six years later Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris collected him from prison.
The British government also abandoned its plans to seek his extradition.
McAuley and Ms Tully separated in February of last year.
