The Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny had a few things in common yesterday while on the campaign trail in Kildare North.
Both found themselves in Naas yesterday afternoon at the same time and both used their visit to stress their belief that, as the song says, the children are our future.
While Mr Ahern said he believed that the State was indeed teaching them well, Mr Kenny said the opposite was the case and the lack of educational facilities in Naas was "a damning indictment of the Government's record".
He accused the Government of failing to plan and fund the education facilities needed for the huge population increase across Kildare and Meath, where the byelections are taking place.
Mr Kenny made his comments following a visit to the local CBS boys' secondary school, along with Fine Gael candidate Darren Scully, where he met students and teachers to highlight the fact that it had been promised an 18-room extension seven years ago.
Seven years on, the extension has still to be built at the school, which has 790 pupils in a building designed for 600, with just one stairwell and nine toilets.
It turned 70 pupils away this year and has children on its waiting list to the year 2017.
As part of emergency measures, the Department of Education has provided funding for a five-room extension but has given no indication when the full extension will be financed.
"Besides being told to shut up and watch the [ department's] website, we've heard nothing," principal Noel Merrick told Mr Kenny.
Meanwhile, Mr Ahern had also arrived in the town with what was arguably the largest canvassing team assembled at any stage during the election campaign.
When the Taoiseach started out at the Tesco shopping centre in the town, he was accompanied by more than 40 supporters, including one Cabinet Minister, three junior Ministers, two TDs, two senators and a battalion of town and county councillors.
As Mr Ahern, who led the phalanx along with Fianna Fáil candidate Áine Brady, approached St Mary's Convent primary school just before 2pm, the canvassers were warned by the Taoiseach's handlers: "Keep to the side, leave room for the mothers and children."
Answering reporters' questions in the school yard, in between greeting children and their delighted mammies, Mr Ahern defended his Government's record on education in Naas and North Kildare.
"I don't feel it's been let down," he said.
"When we came into Government there were about four major projects happening in the country.
"We've got it now to where we're spending literally hundreds of millions of a capital programme on education . . .
"I've been in several schools in this constituency that are new, that have been extended, that have additional teachers. We're not saying it will all be resolved in 2005," the Taoiseach said.
This, Mr Ahern was to find out later on, was little comfort to some of the parents, one of whom buttonholed him later in the canvass at a supermarket.
She told him that many of the girls in the primary school were stuck in prefabs.
"It's a disgrace, a total disgrace," she said.
The majority of the students of Naas, who were on the main street en masse yesterday afternoon, did not appear to care, however, and treated the Taoiseach like a visiting boyband member, mobbing him at times with shouts of "Bertie!"
As Mr Ahern made his way up the town, the Fine Gael entourage was less than 15 minutes behind him. It was smaller in number, with just two TDs (Billy Timmins and Bernard Durkan) and one senator (Brian Hayes).
Mr Kenny's canvass was slower, somewhat less frenetic, but no less determined, with children again emerging as the theme of the day.
The canvass finished at Little Harvard Creche and Montessori School, where Mr Kenny announced a Fine Gael Private Members' motion in the Dáil next week, calling on the Government to introduce new grants for childcare facilities, and tax credits for parents who were being "financially drained" by childcare costs.
During the visit the Fine Gael, leader, a former teacher and father of two young children, took the opportunity to display his repertoire of songs with some of the children.
"Do you know the Barney song?" he asked one group of toddlers, who looked on silently in bemusement.
He had better luck with some of the older children, however, when he led them in a rousing rendition of The Wheels on the Bus and The Hokey Cokey, which he knew the moves to as well.