The officer said he was sent by "head office". The Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald sought to downplay the incident on Claire Byrne's show on Monday morning.

It's quite amazing the amount of money spent on political public relations and yet the idea of simply saying: "That shouldn't have happened," didn't cross Mary Lou McDonald's mind once. She is rarely rattled but during the interview it sounded like she wanted the earth to swallow her whole. 

She had "issue" with someone going to a member's door telling them to delete critical posts, she said, but going to someone's door wasn't an issue within a cumann.

Whether this action came from head office or was a solo run was not addressed, but either option presents more problems.

If head office sanctioned this, it begs wider questions about how the party perceives intimidation and power.

If it was a solo run, it shows that far from some "shadowy figure" pulling the strings, the head doesn't know what the neck is doing and not for the first time. Like the Paddy Holohan mayoral vote in the summer or the Stormont grant money scandal just last month, both laid bare how little the leadership is kept abreast of what's actually going on in local groups.

"Accountability" has been the siren call of Mary Lou McDonald for months and in this shambolic Government, it is essential, but it's a two-way street. Demanding Helen McEntee face the Dáil was right and proper to get to the bottom of how a Fine Gael member became a Supreme Court judge, but shouldn't Mary Lou McDonald's party be conducting its own investigation into who sanctioned such a visit? And if concern about the issue is so pressing, should the leader not have contacted the young woman herself in order to hear how she feels about it? It may not have been meant to intimidate, but it did the job anyway and not condemning it outright was a mistake.

While the party has always sought to be on the right side on equality issues and the leader might have great respect for Brian Stanley, his tweet which brought up Leo Varadkar's sexuality can't be construed as anything other than homophobic and accountability is required here too. 

Poor judgement is human but as we strive for a more equal society, a message should be sent that that kind of poor judgement will not be tolerated and will be punished and not allowed to continue in a role that Sinn Féin has sought for years. 

The Public Accounts Committee does essential work, work that Sinn Féin will not want to have to justify each time Brian Stanley's name is mentioned, to the detriment of everyone.

It appears Mary Lou McDonald's interview was an attempt to draw a line under the issue but has left most of us with more questions than answers and the issue doesn't appear to be going away. 

As the scandal rumbles on, it would be disingenuous to suggest that certain sections of Irish media are not hostile to the party. However, Sinn Féin true-believers are so lost in their own victim complex, routine questions are labelled as an unfair inquisition.

This newspaper has covered the issues and fallouts of the Green Party with rigour when its own female or young rising stars abandoned the party due to its "toxic culture". When these stories were published, Sinn Féin members criticised the Greens and even courted young Green leavers to join Sinn Féin instead. 

Now, caught up in their own accusations of bad behaviour, they have resorted to the very tactics they blasted from the Green Party. Members young and old have labelled those who have come forward as liars, attention seekers and part of a wider conspiracy involving everyone from Fine Gael to the Irish media in order to bring them down, conveniently forgetting that this entire scandal was started by one of their own TDs and a flippant, hurtful tweet about the Troubles.

We are in desperate need of better representation in Dáil Éireann. Young people, women and those from minority ethnic backgrounds are essential in politics to make our country a more equal place. Sinn Féin, which has previously fared well with all three, has a long way to go to make amends for this mess. Mary Lou McDonald is well able to do so, if she wants to.

For a party which feels it gets a harder time in Irish media compared to its rivals, it beggars belief that sending a man to a young woman's door would not be red-flagged as a bad idea, considering the allegations that are often thrown at the party about bullying and intimidation. Slow learners, indeed.