A Dublin Fine Gael TD has complained of 'consistent and sustained' gendered abuse on Twitter by a member of her party's national executive.

Kate O'Connell says the online behaviour, mostly directed at women, by @barryawalsh has been "going on for a long time".

Ms O'Connell claims there are a number of derogatory tweets about her and other female politicians.

She says she printed out the social media posts and passed them around at a meeting on Wednesday.

"I gave out a hard copy, print-outs, of screen-grabs of tweets last night.

"I felt as though if I went in and I just said 'look, there's a member of the national executive being abusive on Twitter' that people in the parliamentary Party (who are) obviously busy, they've more to be at, they'd go 'Isn't that terrible, the executive will deal with it.

"So I felt the impact was if I handed them out".

Source: Twitter

"This was about highlighting the fact that we have somebody on the national executive of Fine Gael who thinks it's appropriate to behave in this manner.

"This is not a bad weekend that he was having - this has been consistent, it's sustained, and it's gendered abuse and it's been going on for a long time and it's not acceptable.

"And as a member of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party, I don't think it's acceptable and to be honest - conversations after the meeting last night - the wider membership of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party do not think this is acceptable behaviour".

Ms O'Connell says several tweets relate to other female politicians: "It's consistent use of the word 'bitch' with reference to women".

"He does abuse men every so often on Twitter, but it's predominately weighted towards women".