As the new merged Labour Party prepares for its first conference, it is clear that so far it has not caught the public imagination. With six weeks to the local and European Parliament elections, Labour's opinion poll rating has remained entirely unaffected by the attempt to portray the merger as the birth of a renewed political force.

Mr Ruairi Quinn maintains he was always modest about the immediate difference the merger would make. Why are they not doing better in the opinion polls? "It's early days yet. There is a great turn-off against politics, particularly among young people. The cynicism and the disinterest are affecting us as a new political organisation on the pitch, which is made up of people who have been around for a long time."

He says comparisons with the PDs' growth are not valid, as "we don't have the wind of the PDs' Angst against Haughey behind our backs."

There are simmering rivalries between original Labour and former Democratic Left organisations, particularly in relation to the forthcoming local elections and in Dublin in the European Parliament elections. There is also the sensitive business of selecting a candidate in Dublin South Central to replace the late, much-lamented Pat Upton. Mr Quinn acknowledges such disputes, but takes the optimistic view that the forthcoming elections will be "a great bonding exercise" and will solve a lot of problems.

It is possible, he concedes, that in some areas they may exacerbate such local difficulties: "It depends on the results. If both sides win, so to speak, then this thing will be consolidated."

In attempting to define "clear points of difference" between Labour and the other political parties, he accepts that there has been considerable convergence among all parties in their approach to economic management.

"There isn't a great divergence. The differences are over what you do with the surpluses, how you use them and how you redistribute them. It is just outrageous, to give one example, that a Government that is going to post a Budget surplus this year of £1.5 billion can't get enough money to run a state-of-the-art hospital in Tallaght and that a well-recognised professional hospital administrator was effectively driven out of the country."

He accepts that the current economic buoyancy means all parties are advocating public spending. He notes Ms Mary Harney's speech at her party conference last week advocating massive spending on infrastructure as well as spending money on tackling educational disadvantage. "It's a long way from getting the State off the backs of the people, that's for sure," he says.

It is Labour's foreign policy that has been attracting most attention recently. On the NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace programme the party seems set to avoid a damaging division at this weekend's conference. There are genuinely different positions and views, says Mr Quinn, and "a crudity of numbers doesn't particularly appeal to me".

This sounds like a leader preparing to use the mechanism of "referring back" a motion to the party's general council for further consideration, thus avoiding a conference vote. "It's too early to say" whether this is what will happen, he says.

With Mr Quinn and those around him clearly supporting PfP involvement and Mr de Rossa, Mr Michael D. Higgins and others opposing it, Labour has managed to agree a common position on it: attack Fianna Fail duplicity. During the week they agreed to call for a referendum on it, not because they believe one is necessary, but because Fianna Fail promised one in opposition and has reneged on this promise in Government.

However, PfP fades into insignificance compared to the long-term EU defence strategy agreed in recent weeks between Mr Quinn, Mr De Rossa, and the deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin. Despite public disagreements between Mr Quinn and Mr De Rossa on the NATO action in Serbia, Mr Quinn says there is now "not an awful lot of difference at senior level in the party on the end destination" for defence policy.

He is calling for the establishment of an EU defence capability involving integration and co-ordination of the defence forces of member-states, including Ireland.

"Let me be clear about it. What I am talking about ultimately is a detachment or a section of the Irish armed forces forming part of a European defence unit which would be operational abroad within either the framework of the OSCE or the United Nations.

"Basically the analysis - and this is shared between myself and Proinsias and Brendan Howlin and others - is that Europe has to develop a defence capability, and by Europe I mean the European Union. We made tentative steps in the Common Foreign and Security Policy components of the Amsterdam Treaty. They have proven to be pretty ineffectual even before they come into play on May 1st."

He would like to see NATO disbanded and replaced by a Northern Hemisphere defence union, a concept he has put forward before. "NATO is a victim of its own past. The Cold War it was formed to fight is now over." In the short term, he says, NATO is not going to disappear, it has an operational capability and "I believe that we have to be able to work with it." The need to be able to act to avoid the butchery of Milosevic is paramount.

He says there is a "permanent fault line of instability" underpinning the Government. The palpable instability present a couple of months ago as revelations flowed from the tribunals and from sources around them has dissipated at the moment but we don't know what will happen next, he says.

"We don't know what Ray Burke is going to say when he comes to the tribunal. We don't know what is going to emerge in relation to the unanswered questions about the Sheedy affair. We don't know the answer to the `why?' question. The Government could put a foot on a political landmine in the morning and the thing will blow up."

The Sheedy affair is "an entire Fianna Fail ring" which we were being asked to believe was a coincidence. We do know that most of those with a connection to it also coincidentally have a Fianna Fail connection, he says. "Now that may be entirely circumstantial given that about 40 per cent of the population vote for Fianna Fail. The statistical probability has to be high, but it seems to be very high."

He says he takes a positive view of this period of tribunals, inquiries and revelation. "When they look back in 20 years they are going to say there was an incredible paradox abroad in the land at this time.

"After 50, 60, 70 years of political and economic failure as a society the process of politics produced the Good Friday agreement. So politics as distinct from violence was a triumph. On the economic side they would see how we have transformed the adversarial Anglo-Saxon tradition of industrial relations and economic action and we have created our own corporatist mode of triangular work between Government politicians, the administration, the social partners: again another triumph for politics.

"And yet right in the heart of that success the actual profession of politics had never been lower. The product was wonderfully successful, the producers were totally traduced.

"And the reason they were traduced I think comes down to one man, C.J. Haughey, the Haughey era and the political culture that Haughey hijacked and moulded to his own shape.

"He didn't do it on his own. He had able helpers, many of whom are in the current Cabinet. If we don't learn the lessons of the unacceptable way in which politics and business interacted then, 20 years on historians will say a golden opportunity was lost and there was a great cynicism. The alternative is to fully clean up politics and to fund political parties openly and transparently."

At 53 in the uncertain world of politics, Ruairi Quinn may have a decade or so to make his mark on Irish society. Asked to name one central political task for that decade he says: "It's convincing people that for the first time ever in the history of the State, probably ever in modern times from 1750 onwards, this country has a unique opportunity to transform itself into a seriously successful, healthy, wealthy and egalitarian society. It is an opportunity that may not come again."