SINN Fein president Gerry Adams has been criticised for tweeting "flippant" messages about rubber ducks and teddy bears when issues in Northern Ireland remain unresolved.
Ann Travers, whose schoolteacher sister Mary (22) was shot dead by the IRA as she left Mass in south Belfast on April 8 1984, yesterday suggested that the Louth TD might be "trying to endear people to him".
Mr Adams has been tweeting almost daily since joining Twitter on February 6.
Almost 12,000 followers have read that he spends nights in with a teddy bear, has a dog called Snowie and has baths with a rubber duck.
He frequently refers to an aide called RG and has confessed to taking a toothbrush into the Dail instead of a pen.
In between writing about more serious issues such as the economy, Mr Adams recently revealed that he had been locked out of his house and been forced to break glass to gain entry.
Sinn Fein has confirmed that the account @GerryAdamsSF belongs to the former MP.
The party said his tweets are tongue-in-cheek.
Ms Travers, whose magistrate father Tom was shot six times during the attack which killed her sister, criticised the tone of the tweets.
"I don't know if he's trying to endear people to him. I didn't know he had four teddy bears or a rubber duck or that he had to break into his house because he locked himself out. It just goes beyond - I don't really know what to say," she told RTE's Joe Duffy.
"It's meaningless really that whenever there is so much going on in the north at the moment we're trying to deal with the past in a balanced way so that everybody is treated fairly and then you've got flippant tweets like that from the leader of Sinn Fein."