A Government Minister who has been subjected to personal online sexual abuse has said “bullies” responsible for harassing women TDs are having a disproportionate impact on Ireland’s democracy.

Minister of State Jennifer Carroll MacNeill attended a special meeting organised by Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Feargháil to discuss the threats and intimidation facing female politicians.

The vast majority of women TDs attended the special meeting which continued for several hours on Wednesday night.

The meeting was also attended by senior members of An Garda Síochána as well as psychologist Dr Maureen Gaffney, who outlined the mentality of those who perpetrate such abuse.

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Ms Carroll MacNeill said the onus should not be put up to women to find a solution when the problem was not of their doing.

“I think it would help a lot if the small people who are doing this would stop being such complete knobs,” she said.

“Anything that could help is welcome. But let’s face it, this is a tiny number of people doing this and having far too much impact on our democracy. Every time someone outside politics calls it out, it genuinely helps because bullies don’t like to be challenged. I’m not sure politicians can fix this problem alone. We need our communities.”

A Co Limerick man was prosecuted after he sent Ms Carroll MacNeill a string of unsolicited sexually-explicit videos, messages and pictures. The impact of the abuse left her with ”a cold sense of dread”, she told the court during the criminal trial. The man who sent her the images was subsequently given a one-year suspended sentence upon conviction.

Several TDs at the meeting recounted their own experiences of harassment and intimidation.

It heard that some of those who abuse politicians are seeking attention for themselves, trying to provoke a reaction from the politicians by diminishing them, belittling them, or making gratuitous, sexist or sexual comments. The accounts pointed to the abuse being widespread, especially on social media platforms.

A significant number of the TDs present raised the issue of a cross-party task force to address the issue and to confront social media companies about the way they facilitate the proliferation of hateful abuse. Some TDs said they were frustrated by the lack of urgency displayed by the big social media companies in terms of taking down offensive and personalised content.

Labour Party leader and vice-chair of the Oireachtas Women’s Caucus, Ivana Bacik said the meeting was very productive and very well attended with most of the 37 women TDs present.

She said that some very significant measures would come out of the meeting, including the establishment of a task force on security for public representatives, their staff, and for local councillors, all of whom have been subjected to online, and personal, abuses.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Ms Bacik said a priority would be to challenge the big social media companies for not doing enough to prevent such abuse proliferating online.

“We’ve been engaging ourselves with the Facebook parent company, Meta, about the proliferation of private Facebook groups which are being used to spread messages of hate, and to escalate levels of harassment and intimidation for public representatives.

“Through the task force we [hope] to engage with the heads of Meta, and of all the social media platforms which are being used in this way, to ensure that they take swift action on takedown.”

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She said women shouldn’t have to wait for the online safety apparatus - now in place following recent legislation - to kick in.

“There should be an initiative taken by social media platforms to stop this level of abuse going on,” she said.

The meeting and proposals for the new group came after five female politicians spoke to The Irish Times in January about the level of abuse and threats they are dealing with. The politicians spoke of finding bullet shells on their door, of receiving pornographic letters, death threats and of being either intimidated in their constituency office or being advised to stop holding clinics altogether.