A leading Irish politician is in hot water over his Tweets on the arrest of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn for an alleged sexual assault in a New York hotel.

Former Green Party senator Dan Boyle has been roundly criticized for comparing the price of Strauss-Kahn’s Manhattan hotel room to the alleged crime.

Boyle, who has landed himself in trouble over his Twitter account before, has been inundated with complaints over his remarks.

The Green Party chairman originally tweeted: “Strauss-Kahn sexual assault allegations are of course of the utmost seriousness, but paying $3,000 for a hotel room isn’t all that far behind.”

Cyberspace inhabitants reacted with immediate venom to Boyle’s remarks according to the Irish Examiner.

“Way to belittle sexual assault, eh?” wrote one respondent.

Since his original Tweet, Boyle has made a number of attempts to defend what he wrote.

One of his replies on Twitter said: “Of course I believe sexual assault is far more serious, which is what I said.”

According to the Examiner, one poster put it to him that: “You could have made that point any number of ways.” He replied: “Maybe. But many will deliberately choose to misinterpret anything I say.”

Speaking to the paper, Boyle has since admitted that he was conscious the allegations against the IMF head were serious and upsetting and he accepted his phraseology was “not the best”.

“I was trying to make a point that the additional obscenity was $3,000 a night for a hotel room.”

He added that the nature of Twitter is “provocative” and it was hard to make a point in 140 characters.