Stephen Fuller

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For other uses, see Stephen Fuller (disambiguation).

Stephen Fuller (died 1984) was an Irish Fianna Fáil Party politician who served as TD for the Kerry North constituency.

Fuller served in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). He opposed the acceptance of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and fought in the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War (1922-23). During the civil war, he was captured by the forces of the Irish Free State and detained in Ballymullen barracks in Tralee. On March 7 1923, he was one of the victims of a notorious atrocity carried out by National Army troops. In reprisal for the deaths of five of their comrades at the hands of an IRA landmine, the Free State soldiers took Fuller and six other Republican prisoners from Tralee to Ballyseedy crossroads, tied them to a mine and detonated it. Fuller was blown to safety by the blast of the explosion but his six comrades were killed. He was badly wounded but escaped to tell others of the event, discrediting the Army version that the prisoners had died while clearing a road booby-trapped by the Anti-Treaty IRA.

Fuller left the IRA after the civil war and joined Fianna Fail, a political party founded by republican leader Eamon de Valera.

He was elected to Dáil Éireann on his first attempt, as a Fianna Fáil candidate at the 1937 general election, when he was the last of three Fianna Fáil TDs to be elected to the 9th Dáil in the 4-seat constituency. He was re-elected to the 10th Dáil at the 1938 general election, when Fianna Fáil again won three out of four seats, but lost his seat at the 1943 general election to the independent candidate Patrick Finucane. He did not contest any further elections.