A call has been made for Sinn Féin Senator Maire Devine to give an explanation to her Seanad colleagues about her retweeting of a malicious post about a prison officer killed by the IRA.
Independent Senator Gerard Craughwell called for time to be set aside in the Upper House "to explain to her colleagues how she got involved in this series of tweets".
Ms Devine was suspended from the party for three months after she retweeted a post referring to Brian Stack as a “sadist prison officer”.
The Dublin-based Senator was absent when Mr Craughwell raised the issue. He said he knew Ms Devine “as a hard-working person here in the Seanad, but I could not allow such a thing to go without comment”.
Thoughtless people
He said “Brian Stack was a prison officer who served this country during the Troubles. He was murdered by thoughtless people. Like many other members of this country’s security forces – prison officers, gardaí and soldiers – Mr Stack stood guard and looked after this country during the worst of times.”
He added that it was "totally unacceptable that anybody would seek to denigrate his name in any way now. In my view Mr Stack was a true patriot of Ireland. He needs to be respected for standing his ground in dealing with prisoners during some of the most troubled times we have known in this country."
But Sinn Féin Seanad leader Rose Conway-Walsh said the party had acted “swiftly and decisively” on the issue.
‘Serious error’
She acknowledged that Ms Devine “did indeed make a very serious error which caused much hurt to the Stack family”.
Ms Conway-Walsh said that Ms Devine “has rightly profusely apologised for her unacceptable actions”.
She said party leader Mary Lou McDonald “acted swiftly and decisively to implement the disciplinary process which led to Senator Devine being suspended from the party for three months”.
