First on Pat Rabbitte's list of things to do on Saturday was the task of posing for photographs with more than 80 candidates for next year's local election leaflets.
As the hopefuls queued up for a handshake and a quick smile with the dear leader, one said Rabbitte must have been feeling like a shopping-centre Santa Claus. Yet if he wasn't giving away gifts at the conference, he spent plenty of time giving out about the Government.
Fond of the barbed remark, he likened Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney and Charlie McCreevy to the Three Stooges. The oddball theme was taken up by the party's justice spokesman, Joe Costello, who said Michael McDowell was like Walter Mitty. Despite a disappointing result at last year's general election, it was a good-humoured conference. Delegates said that in a party members' poll, Rabbitte's elevation to the top post six months ago had lifted spirits.
"If Pat Rabbitte is as good as he sounds, he can't be bad," said Johnny O'Rourke from Cavan, a Labour member for 50 years. "The Labour Party will have to start moving and go forward with socialism. We'd become more conservative than the Conservatives."
It was said over the weekend that Labour's only reference to Marx was when Rabbitte told a Groucho gag, but Johnny O'Rourke was not in doubt about where he wanted the party to go. "I've been around a long time and I don't think things have ever been as bad in terms of services. There so much need and so much want and nobody seems to care."
Younger activists were engrossed in the realpolitik of the day-to-day battle. Kevin Humphreys from Dublin South East spoke of preparations for the local elections. "We've eight people looking to run already."
His colleague, Nap Keeling, believed Rabbitte was making a good impression nationally. A barber he visited in Killarney was impressed with Rabbitte's Dáil performance. Nap is short for Napoleon. While Keeling admitted to having electoral aspirations, it is presumed that his career plan is more modest than that of his historical namesake.
Many delegates said the best speaker was Michael D. Higgins. A man of passion and a wide-angle world view, he was like a prophet from the Old Testament, said one fan. If Higgins's address on Friday night was not written on tablets of stone, the Galway man must be the first politician in the world to issue two press releases about the same speech.
Yet it was Rabbitte's weekend, so much so that the prize in the raffle at the youth wing stand was a toy rabbit. The real Rabbitte, of course, has bigger prizes in his vision.