Firmly-focussed Roche becomes tougher as Spring offers students a loan of the car

The day began with a further slump in the Irish Independent poll. Just when it seemed that things could hardly get worse, the news came through that a man associated with Fine Gael had been arrested in connection with the leaks. "That puts the tin hat on it," said a senior Labour figure gloomily. By this analysis, her victim status thus confirmed, McAleese was set for a landslide.

And still, Adi Roche pulled herself out of bed, donned her smartest suit, set her chin a notch higher, kicked any remnants of sisterly love out the bus window and set the tone in her first radio interview of the day.

She demanded that polls within a week of elections should be banned; she linked Mary Banotti and Fine Gael with nuclear weapons through their support of a military alliance; and she stated baldly that to elect Mary McAleese could jeopardise the peace process by sending the wrong message.

The build-up to a tougher, sharper, firmly-focused Roche, glimpsed by observers on the campaign trail, was complete. What Kerry audiences have seen in recent days is an angry, unapologetic, hard-hitting woman who has finally, reluctantly, accepted that to win, you have to fight.

"Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have made this a single issue election," she said. "They have reduced it to civil war thinking."

She had been "tagged a Stalinist and its polar opposite - `touchyfeely', though neither comes even close to describing the real Adi Roche". Her "strongest constituency - the young vote - had been silenced. 50,000 of them", she said, because many of them would be unable to travel home to vote. "And Mary McAleese had the possibility of reversing this decision but chose to be silent."

She herself, she said, had not been silent in this campaign in relation to issues and had made some important proposals. "But I have been demeaned and degraded for these proposals." And to a packed canteen at Tralee RTC, she announced: "I am the liberal candidate in this election. I am also an Independent candidate and I am appalled that others are claiming this as their prize."

Had she learned anything from the campaign, she was asked earlier? "I've learned about the cynicism of politicians and what they are capable of doing to get what they perceive to be their prize. And I've learned about the cynicism of some commentators who will run any old story whether or not it's true."

But she had also seen everywhere she had gone, people who had taken the message of the presidential oath - to serve - for themselves, for their neighbours and their communities. And that, she said, "was empowering and inspirational".

Yesterday, the Labour party leader, Dick Spring, was on hand again to escort the candidate, this time on his own turf, with the able assistance of the South Kerry TD, Breeda Moynihan-Cronin.

He bantered with students at Tralee RTC, "promising" mischievously to give them a half day if Adi won, to write letters allowing them to take Friday off (they roared their approval), to give them a lift home, even to give a loan of the car.

"I'm a politician," he grinned, "I can make false promises."

Meanwhile, Dick had challenges of his own to conjure with; the fall of his party in the polls to 9 per cent, for one. He explained that one by pointing out that the past fortnight "had been dominated by the unseemly Bruton-Ahern row and to a large extent we've been sidelined. The one thing that's important from a party point of view is that you've got to stay very much with the day-to-day issues. There's no doubt it has a bearing on people's responses in opinion polls".

He was still there in the large crowd that gave the candidate an emotional send-off with flowers and hugs as she left for Kerry airport and her last formal media engagement of the campaign: RTE's Prime Time last night.

Mr Spring has said he will give his second preference vote to Ms Mary Banotti but has not called on others to do likewise, a spokesman for the Labour Party leader said last night.

He was responding to a statement from Ms Banotti welcoming what she said was "the statement from Dick Spring, Labour Party leader, requesting supporters of Ms Adi Roche to give their second preferences to Mary Banotti".

Mr Spring's spokesman said he had merely answered a question on his personal voting preferences. He had said he would give his number one vote to Ms Roche, his number two to Ms Banotti, his third preference to Mr Derek Nally and his fourth to Dana Rosemary Scallon.