Sarah Harte: Parties must do much more to address treatment of politicians 

We need to examine attitudes across the political spectrum because there is a deficit of understanding of how bad it is out there for female politicians

Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh said that online abuse of politicians has worsened and become 'more sexual'.

It is four years and six days since we had a general election. So, it’s safe to assume that our next general election will be at the latest early next year with the Dáil’s full-term ending. 

Meanwhile, we have local and European elections in June. So, it’s hardly a surprise that politicians are popping up to opine on a range of topics including councillors we ordinarily hear little about, and those we dispatched to Brussels we may have forgotten about in a case of out of sight out of mind.