Approached on foot or glimpsed from the window of a passing car, all you see is the smiling face and a single word, in an elegant cursive script: "Sean". It is only if you get quite close that you see, in small dark lettering on a dark background, the word "Haughey".
It is rather touching that Sean Haughey seems a little embarrassed by his surname. It is also a mark of how far out of the loop he really is. His little gesture of nervous humility suggests he worries about the sins of the father. The Boss's real political son, Bertie Ahern, is gloriously untroubled by such anxieties.
You might expect from Fianna Fáil the same reticence about the recent past which Sean Haughey seems to feel. You might imagine that the last thing either the Progressive Democrats or Fianna Fáil might want to call to mind in the election campaign is the Philip Sheedy affair and the appalling attempt to appoint Hugh O'Flaherty to the European Investment Bank.
It is not that the Sheedy saga and its aftermath were exceptionally bad by the standards to which public life has been reduced. One aspect of the whole business is unique, however. For the first and so far only time, public opinion made a difference.
Hugh O'Flaherty's appointment, which had the full backing of both government parties, was blocked by the outrage of ordinary citizens. There was a public revolt and it worked. Briefly, the public got angry and exercised its latent power.
Public opinion went back to sleep, of course. Normal service was resumed. Yet you would imagine that the last thing the outgoing Government would want to do would be to remind the citizenry of that episode, to prompt again the thought that there is an alternative to the fatalistic resignation that protects the golden circles. The astonishing revelation of the last few days is that the arrogance has gone so far they are prepared to taunt us with our own impotence.
It started on RTÉ radio's Saturday View programme at the weekend. The Attorney General, Michael McDowell, was debating with Alan Dukes of Fine Gael and John Gormley of the Green Party. It was the usual knockabout stuff and McDowell was having fun with the wilder fringes of Green economics. Then, entirely off his own bat, he fired what he obviously thought was a devastating salvo: Fine Gael had supported the nomination of Green economist Richard Douthwaite to the European Investment Bank.
It said much about the feebleness of the opposition that he got away with this, but I can't have been the only listener frozen with wide-eyed disbelief. Michael McDowell's leader Mary Harney had infamously claimed the O'Flaherty affair would be forgotten in three months. Now he was openly testing this amnesia, presuming that no one would remember that Richard Douthwaite was supported as an alternative to Hugh O'Flaherty.
The mockery seemed incredible until the following day's papers revealed that, on the day after the election was called, the Government had appointed Joe Burke - who employed Philip Sheedy as an architect and visited him a few weeks before his release - as chairman of the Dublin Port Authority. Startling as it may seem, they really are rubbing our noses in it.
JOE BURKE was a Fianna Fáil Dublin city councillor between 1985 and 1991, at which time he served a term as a member of what was then called the Dublin Port and Docks Board. That could be justified on the basis of his involvement in local politics.
Now, though he is undoubtedly a capable person, he has not been a public representative for over a decade. He is simply a private citizen and, as the Taoiseach told the Dáil in 1999, "a fairly good builder". Bertie Ahern went on to say that Mr Burke "is not a political heavyweight of any kind".
It seems clear, then, that Joe Burke was not appointed to lead the Dublin Port Authority because of his political skills. It is not obvious either what his undoubted competence as a builder specialising in the refurbishment of pubs has to do with the management of Ireland's busiest port.
If he has a special expertise in maritime affairs, it is almost certainly unknown to the Taoiseach, who told the Dáil: "When I meet him we usually talk about sport, sometimes about building and politics."
The reality is that what distinguishes Joe Burke from hundreds of other builders is that his evidence is, and has been, important to the Taoiseach's reputation. In the coming year, he will almost certainly be telling the Flood tribunal about a meeting he had, at Bertie Ahern's request, with the developer Tom Gilmartin. And in the Sheedy affair, his public statement that Bertie Ahern knew nothing of his involvement with Philip Sheedy was very important to the Taoiseach.
There is no question but that Mr Burke's evidence on these matters was and will be honest, but it takes a special kind of arrogance for the Taoiseach not to be concerned about the possible perception of a conflict of interest. If they are this arrogant after five years in power, what will they be like after 10?