Female TD's break silence on harassment

There is a general harshening and coarsening of how people interact with politics here and I’ve no doubt that female politicians are very much taking some of the worst of it.

One of the better things about Ireland and Irish political culture was that we could all be civil, agree to disagree and find compromise and common ground.

That’s rapidly being undermined, particularly with social media pile ons, bullying and name calling.

It’s a bit like when trolls take over a forum and the whole things begins to disintegrate into a shouting match.

The last thing we need to do is adopt the horror show that American and British politics have become.

Don't forget the harrassment that goes on inside the Dáil as well. Remember that male TD pulling a Female TD onto his lap?

I think where incidents like the ones described in the article occur there shouldn’t be any sense of a fear of calling it out.

If TDs, or any public rep, are being harassed and threatened, there needs to be a line drawn and that is about a social norm that’s being eroded, largely by social media.

Stalking someone, sexually harassing them isn’t acceptable. End of story really. It needs a firm response.

There’s a parallel issue with an anti politics and not seeing elected reps as humans. That’s new and it’s very destructive. You’re seeing things like the normalising of protesting outside TDs homes, besieging and roaring at people on the street and so on.

That’s going to drive a lot of people away from ever contemplating standing and we’ll be a lot worse off for it. It’s one of the reasons that American politics is increasingly bereft of quality candidates - nobody in their right mind would put themselves through the public attacks, the character assassination, the vicious negative campaign that’s all about personalised attacks on the individual and then the social media elements of it are hellish.

The attack on and murder of Jo Cox should have been a warning sign in the U.K. that things are getting far, far too vicious and toxic.

In Ireland we need to nip this in the bud, before it’s normalised and it’ll take a political actors on all sides and across the spectrum to put their feet down and raise standards.

It also needs serious legal response to harassing or threatening politicians and that needs to be seen to be enforced across the board. It’s an attack on the democratic process. No public rep should be living in fear.

Women seem to get more abuse from some of these people. I’m aware of women in other public facing roles who’ve had really horrendous experience with stalkers, and to be quite honest, I think the Irish frameworks in law for dealing with it at hopelessly inadequate.

Three people I know who were badly stalked by complete unhinged individuals got very little help from the Gardai. two were women and one was a guy, and in all cases they got pointless, no action, even if sympathetic responses, as there doesn’t appear to be adequate law to enforce. They don’t want to act until things have spiralled to a very serious incident, where someone has physically turned up.

I think the legal framework and enforcement responses here just aren’t adequate at all.