Holly Cairns

Cork TD Holly Cairns speaks to Pat Kenny about a terrifying ordeal with a persistant stalker at her Cork home.

“I suppose we need to ask questions,” she said. “What other things can be put in place to try and address the situation to try and understand it – I don’t think any of those things will happen if we don’t have the conversation about it." “Actually, it is something that does need to be addressed because, if I was somebody looking to get into politics, I think what would be more of a deterrent is probably the fact that nothing is being done about this situation, in reality, to really try and help it.” “You don’t want to be talking about things and it seeming a bit rich but the reality is that our, kind of, collective silence on it means that, really, nothing is going to be done about it. “For a time, I did feel that I wanted to take a step back from doing different media and different things but then I thought, if that’s the case, we probably need to have a discussion about what can be done.” “Even when the abuse I got was of a different nature to that, online and even in the mail, I felt kind of relatively unphased by it if I’m honest and maybe, in hindsight, a little bit obnoxiously, I thought, ‘oh that’s water off a duck’s back for me.’”