THE pensioner leant on his gate in the sunshine and watched Mairead Foley, running for the PDs in Dublin North East, do a bit of running up his road. "Bejaze," he said thoughtfully, "but the TDs is gone very young.
His wife is sitting on the wall talking to an elderly friend. "That's Mary Harney," the friend says excitedly, pointing at Mairead.
"No it's not," says the wife scornfully. "I seen the two of them together up in Donaghmede. You know this one off the television. She's the one that does the social welfare on Live at Three." By now Mairead Foley bad arrived at the little group.
Behind Mairead, from the PD jeep comes the opening bars of Dave Brubeck playing Take Five. Why this is the PD signature tune no one seems to know. But it adds to the air of play that surrounds an energetic canvass on a fine summer's afternoon.
A posse of PDs are speeding up and down the modestly prosperous roads at the good end of Raheny, beside Saint Anne's Park, in the Dublin North East constituency. Birds chirrup. There is an occasional dinghy pulled up into a driveway. Windows gleam and curtains are ruched. "I'm absolutely delighted to meet you," a woman in the next house says. "I most certainly will be giving you my number one. You have a marvellous leader."
The candidate smiles delightedly. "It's an awful pity you have to go in with that bloody Fianna Fail." The candidate diplomatically keeps on smiling.
"Hurry up, hurry up," the director of elections says under his breath. To him, this is only "a B road, shading to a C" - that is, he knows, from the tallies at the last election, that the party hasn't done well here. His business is on hold while be tries to push the PD vote up in this, the fourth election he has run here, each one with a different candidate.
He was never in politics until the night Des O'Malley was expelled from Fianna Fail and spoke on television. "I turned to my wife and I said, `If ever that man founds a party I'm going to join it'." And so he did. And that's why he's here now, hunting his young canvassers along, keeping the candidate for when there's a door already answered, ticking off promises of first preferences and topping up the supply of single issue pamphlets.
They got the crime ones and the tax ones from head office, but the water charges is one they generated themselves when they found they had to answer questions on the PDs water policy. Maybe they'd better get one ready on the single mother's allowance. The only time The Irish Times witnessed any hostility, that is the issue. "I'm a single mother," the woman at a beautifully kept house snapped. "I'm not voting for you.
"But if I could just explain the canvasser began. "No," the woman said, closing the door - and a door was never more firmly closed.
In general, what people care about - it is a feature either of this election or of the people you find at home in a comfortable suburb on a weekday afternoon - hasn't much to do with any party's policies. The points system. Pensions.
One gentleman runs a therapeutic mini golf club for other elderly gentlemen - men in their 80s, maybe, who've had heart bypasses or hip replacements. He wants to know why the corporation charges them £500 a year to use the mini golf course. He wants to know why, when the councillors discussed the matter and said it should be provided free, the corporation officials ignored the councillors. "Are you a councillor?" he says to Mairead Foley. She explains that she is not, that she was in the Civil Service, that Mary Harney approached her to run knowing she had strong views in the social area, and that she hopes to make a contribution to politics precisely because she isn't caught up in any past. But this may not be the greatest of recommendations on the actual doorstep. "A new face is always welcome," people say politely, but perhaps they like councillors and locals and people who'll do things for the area. "I'm afraid I don't have a track record. I'm new to politics," Mairead says to one woman, obviously hoping this will cut one way. But maybe it cuts quite another way. "Ye,ah," says the woman. "It's a pity."
Still Mairead Foley is the first PD candidate to have street cred outside churches in Darndale and Bonnybrook and Priorswood: the least privileged people are the most likely to know that her great subject is the social welfare system. She's youthful, too, and wonderfully pleasant and enthusiastic. She heads off across a road to grab a sandwich in a pub with her full time, voluntary helpers, Noelle and Catherine, and from the back the three of them might be any three young wans, in their wedge heels and slightly flared pants and shiny jackets. You would never think that they are out there making an act of faith in our electoral democracy.
No more than anyone would have thought, a few months ago, that the young Irish woman on the beach at Agadir was Mairead, trying to make up her mind whether to give up her permanent, pensionable, senior Civil Service job to run for the Dail. She will have lost a lot if she doesn't make it. What's more, she is committed, win or lose, to nursing the constituency and running again next time. "I want real change," she says. "I want to apply private enterprise to the social area as well as the business area. I felt I could come into the PDs at a level where I might have influence The road to influence, on this day's canvass, looks to be a long one, and one that winds through some improbable territory. The charges for minigolf, for instance.