Mansergh shuns the 'egotism' of begging for votes

On the canvass:Five years on from a baptism of fire on the South Tipperary canvass, five years of living in the constituency . . . What have you learned, Senator Mansergh?

Rivals' posters yelp "energetic", "committed", "dedicated". And yours? "Active Parliamentarian". For pity's sake. Who else, in the global history of canvassing, would put that on an election poster? "You know, that doesn't bother me in the slightest," he replies gaily.

"Will you give me your number one?" is not in his vocabulary, nor even "give me a vote". He doesn't "like the egotism of it", he says, as shades of hyperactive Fianna Fáil rival, Mattie McGrath, fast-talking, hand-pumping, grassroots canvasser par excellence, hover in the air.

McGrath misspelt Mansergh's name on his literature, we learn, and also flies the smallest Fianna Fáil logo in the country, reportedly. Mansergh, by contrast, is a "traditionalist" in such matters.

Five years on, his doorstep style is still rather ponderous, if a little more confident: "I'll just give you my card. Here it is. And there is my CV" - handing over his leaflet - "and my priorities." "Do the best you can," he murmurs. On the back of the little business card, are lengthy quotations from Charles Kickham - "And - tho' slavery's cloud o'er the morning hath hung/The full noon of freedom will beam round thee yet" - and from Seán Lemass, his warning to governments about the "too ready assumption that social benefits would follow automatically economic achievements, that they would be fairly shared amongst our community".

Huh? Would you be the mystery third socialist in Leinster House, Senator? "I'd consider myself coming from the left-wing end of the party . . ." Then there's a 60-minute spin through the peacemaker memorabilia and international honours on his office wall, a reminder that Robert Emmet's grandfather lived two doors down and shares a local cemetery with Mansergh contemporaries, a look at the Michael Davitt portrait inside his own hall door in Friarsfield House, and the tree inside the gate that was a gift from Gerry Adams in Christmas 1999.

Credentials, and his right to be in Tipperary in the first place, thus established, we head for the day's business proper: a canvass of Cashel town.

Cashel has its issues and by the end, they are politely embedded on the senator's brain: the hospital (closed this year); bad planning (apartments towering over 13th century Dominic's Abbey, in the shadow of the Rock); a poor Garda presence (they have to be summoned from Cahir).

'Bertiegate' hovers in the ether, usually conveyed as a sense of unease rather than expressed: "I think Bertie'll get back in again," ventures an anxious, Fianna Fáil voter at the mart. "It's going to be tight," says the senator.

Asked later if he has ethical concerns, the "muzzle", as he calls it, slips: "His period as Taoiseach, does it count for nothing?" he asks heatedly. "What is the pressing public importance of all this - compared to judging the existing Government? It should be left to the tribunal. It is utterly peripheral to what we are talking about today. I am sick and tired of pseudo-ethical issues being used [ to remove taoisigh] . . . A substantial part of the Mahon tribunal is dealing with allegations by a disappointed developer, allegations which have varied from time to time . . ."

Up the street, a woman turns away from them: "I don't want to know anything about politics - you already took away the hospital. I have to go private with my mother". The more combative Cllr Roger Kennedy steps in: "Noonan made that decision back in '96 and there's no rolling back on it."

A noon-time pint-drinker in a pub teases and suggests that he buy a drink for the house. Mansergh snaps: "I don't operate that way", and sweeps out.

Later on, we come across an angry Maria, sitting outside her house just below the majestic Rock. "I voted Fianna Fáil all my life," she starts, before summing up what ails herself and the town: the "eyesore" apartments rearing above Dominic's Abbey, while Fianna Fáil "lined the pockets of speculators and builders"; the Garda situation; immigrants (too many, of the wrong kind); but above all, Bertie.

A deserted wife, she reared two children on £29 a week while being pursued in the courts for her husband's whereabouts. "I worked three jobs, day and night, cleaning and working in a bar. And there's Bertie Ahern, in a bloody good government job and telling us all he had to have a dig-out to keep going . . . I'm very annoyed about it and so are many separated men and women."

As we pass Dominic's Abbey, we pause awhile to peer in at the wonderful old stone walls. "I love canvassing stones," says Martin Mansergh wistfully.