A former housing officer, in 1991, McCorley was jailed for 66 years for the attempted murder of an army officer and possession of explosives whilst she was a
Provisional Irish Republican Army paramilitary. While in prison she obtained a first-class honours degree in social sciences with the
Open University. She served eight years of her sentence before being released
under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. She was the first female prisoner to be released following the agreement. In July 2012, she replaced her party colleague
Paul Maskey, an
abstentionist MP in the
parliament of the United Kingdom, who had resigned from the Northern Ireland Assembly as part of Sinn Féin's policy of abolishing
double jobbing. McCorley lost her seat at the
2016 Assembly election. She holds a diploma in Irish from the
University of Ulster and a post-graduate diploma in Gaeilge agus Léann an Aistriúcháin from
Queen's University Belfast. ==References==