Shane Duffy reveals racist and sectarian abuse

Celtic's Shane Duffy arriving before the Scottish Premiership match at Celtic Park.

Republic of Ireland defender Shane Duffy has suffered racist and sectarian abuse on Instagram.

Duffy also revealed that he received a vile message about his late father Brian who passed away last summer.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, is understood to have commenced an investigation into the incidents.

Duffy shared a series of messages online on Monday, commenting: "There's abuse which is fine but surely there's a limit." Instagram has told Sky Sports News it is investigating the abuse.

The 29-year-old's revelation comes less than a week after his international team-mate James McClean shared threats sent to him on social media last week. He said: "These platforms don't show any accountability or look after the people on the end of this constant abuse, whether racial, sectarian, personal. It's a poison in modern-day society and it's disgusting. I'm fed up talking about it because nothing gets done. It is about time these people are named, shamed, and dealt with by the police and/or courts."

Earlier this month, Instagram announced plans to impose stricter penalties for online abuse.

Instagram said: "Our rules against hate speech don't tolerate attacks on people based on their protected characteristics, including race or religion. We strengthened these rules last year, banning more implicit forms of hate speech, like content depicting Blackface and common antisemitic tropes.

"We take action whenever we become aware of hate speech, and we're continuously improving our detection tools so we can find it faster. Between July and September of last year, we took action on 6.5m pieces of hate speech on Instagram, including in DMs, 95 per cent of which we found before anyone reported it."