Driving home the party's message

Campaign trail: There may well be tougher ways to win votes. It's just hard to think of any while gulping coffee out of the boot of a Fianna Fáil Spacewagon at 7 a.m. in a chilly car-park before heading into what we are promised will be a 10-mile tailback.

The young candidate's mission today is: a) to demonstrate that the N3 is basically a 10-mile car park and, b) that three Government TDs in the constituency, including a Cabinet Minister, are not nearly enough to sort it. A problem of this magnitude requires four. At least.

A powerful message no doubt, but Shane Cassells's immediate difficulty is that almost all his rivals are pitching the same transport line. The PDs, for instance, have employed flashing lights and smutty Molly Bloom imagery - "M3 Yes Yes Yes" - in pleasing symmetry with a candidate named Sirena.

The fact that no one, not even Vincent Salafia, a potential litigant against the proposed new route, is saying No No No to an M3 is hardly worth mentioning; that would only confuse the poor voters.

In any event, as the candidate seeking to distinguish yourself, you have to engage in some blue skies thinking, get all your ducks in a row, step up to the plate. In other words, you nab a Minister, put him in a wagon and disgorge him and his empathetic mien into the stationary traffic at rush hour, with yourself prominently alongside and a crew of be-jerseyed young Fianna Fáilers.

All by way of demonstrating that not only are you intimately acquainted with the daily crimes being perpetrated against decent, hard-working grassroots, but that you have the clout to haul the responsible Minister to the scene of the crime to judge for himself.

All goes to plan as we stop-start, bumper to bumper, for a few miles south of Dunshaughlin. Then the fates decide to have a laugh. The traffic frees up. As we belt along, the Minister, Martin Cullen, a tad squashed in the back of the wagon between The Irish Times and the lanky candidate, announces amiably that he is a martyr to car sickness.

We tuck our coats in around us thoughtfully and turn our attention to the candidate - a 26-year-old sports journalist with the Fingal Independent - who affirms our trade by declaring that he's hoping never to be a journalist again after a couple of weeks. Then we hit the area around Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, and a dead halt.

Ideal canvassing conditions - but for the Opposition, surely, you may be thinking. Still, it's the old dog for the hard road. The little convoy pulls in to the margin and the Ógra boys and girls disembark to hold their banners aloft while the Minister and candidate step out on the road to accost innocent drivers.

Irish commuters are an unnaturally courteous lot. No one shouts obscenities or tries to pull him through a window by his scarf or wonders why the Minister suddenly got the urge to view a crime scene that's been around for aeons (since 1999, actually, according to the candidate), and for which he is responsible. Polite, red-eyed people tell depressing, repetitive tales of four-hour commutes.

Yes, they confirm, they would like a new motorway and a new railway. A helicopter service would be nice if at all possible, thanks. In fact there's an airfield at Bective . . . That was a joke, maybe.

Then a traffic garda arrives, rubs his eyes disbelievingly, and tells us to step back behind the grass verge, please. That knocks the relaxed air out of things. Noel Dempsey is just ahead of him in a nice black Mercedes as our man is ferried back to his, nicely timed to take him to a Cabinet meeting. The candidate makes his way back up the N3, to feed the troops, before descending on Dunboyne. It was a good morning's work, if visibility is the objective.

It may be his first time to contest a Dáil election but Shane Cassells is no naif. He joined Fianna Fáil at 17, believing it to be "a national movement that encapsulates a real, true sense of Irishness", and still believes it.

Add to that the "hard neck" he says he was born with plus a sterling set of connections: one famous trade unionist uncle who ran for Labour in the European elections and another who spearheaded Meath football's route to glory.

Then throw in Fiona, the longstanding girlfriend - "I suppose I'll have to propose if I get elected" - whose father, Richie Healy, was Meath Fianna Fáil director of elections for 30 years and a mover in the peace process. Anything is possible.