With voters showing little interest in the issues, candidates for the European Parliament are relying more than ever on stunts, writes Kathy Sheridan
So, Royston, why are we loitering at a chilly corner of the IFSC at 7.30 a.m.? "They want to see you at places like this. They want to know you'd be hungry for it," he says earnestly. That answer might impel you to run riot with a sledgehammer, but it doesn't make him wrong.
"It's showtime," was how P.J. Mara introduced the last general election with terrifying accuracy. What it meant was the Taoiseach's picture peering gravely from every vertical structure in the country, while the man himself roared across Ireland at lethal speeds, storming the shopping centres, rictus grin, hand out, pausing barely long enough to pant a "Howarya".
If "Son of Bertie", as Brady is widely known, took a look and said "I could do that", can you blame him? He is reckoned to have spent €36,000 on poster printing and hanging alone. If even €28,000 of that was on poster printing, at around €7 apiece, that's 4,000 posters, conservatively, in a compact city. Nuala Ahern needed only 500 to win a European seat in the vastly more scattered constituency of Leinster.
The masterstroke is the notepads, the post-it style notelets bearing Brady's name across the bottom. At the IFSC, hundreds are handed out to sleep-walking commuters. "They might just take it out of politeness but they'll see it later when it's lying around their desks," he reasons. At this hour, few words are exchanged. He's not even bothering to produce his policy leaflets.
The punters can certainly see that Brady is hungry. It's why he's hungry that remains the mystery. Each phase of the campaign has been carefully planned. Even as he actively shunned media company on the canvass (The Irish Times had to ambush him), 80 double-decker buses, plastered with his image, were hitting the streets.
When a frantically busy Taoiseach a.k.a. the EU president turned up at St Vincent's Centre on the Navan Road, purportedly to canvass the staff and residents with his protégé, the real point of his appearance was explained in a supportive Sunday article.
"The main reason for the Taoiseach joining the canvass was to provide Royston with the opportunity to get a number of pictures which could be used in the last batch of literature in the closing days of the campaign," it reported authoritatively. "With Ahern leaving for Mexico the following day, no other candidates would have further photo opportunities with him," it added, as if bearing witness to a mighty stroke. Coming soon: photographic proof that Brady hob-nobs with the Taoiseach, incidentally empathising with the less fortunate.
When Brady plaintively insists that his sudden bout of media shyness is down to his yearning for the time to do what matters to him - i.e. talking to the people, putting policy before image - it doesn't wash.
EU treaties? "I never said I knew all about them. These things come as you get into it." Any EU committees you yearn to get your teeth into? "I don't know . . . I'm not elected yet." Why so shy about debating with other candidates? "There's nothing to be gained from it." He's probably right.
And anyway, the kids go boggle-eyed when he appears. "His pictures are everywhere. Me mam saw him in VIP!" squeals one at a Lucan school. At the IFSC, uniformed schoolchildren excitedly lower their windows for a quick hello and a notepad. Would that make a difference to how you would vote, I ask them? "Yes, definitely, he gets involved with people," they answer, breathlessly, mysteriously. And so, the man virtually unheard of just a year ago, who rose to prominence with a series of attacks and stunts, has become a household name, a true celebrity, well-placed for Europe.
Visibility is all. The stunt is key. Image is king. Royston Brady may be the most extreme practitioner, but he is not alone. That's why Dublin printers ran out of cardboard supplies for posters last week.
It's why the Taoiseach made a prat of himself buying flowers for his Chief Whip and the Tánaiste on Grafton Street and why the Green Party leader turned up at a launch clutching a bunch of sunflowers.
It's why Gay Mitchell fooled around for the cameras with scary, life-size cut-outs of himself and why the Minister for Justice posed with a large banner that put the word "clowns" and his coalition partners in the same sentence.
It's why the Labour leader made a self-confessed idiot of himself in his business suit by taking the wheel of the Viking Splash for a photo call, though it hardly goes near explaining why the PDs troubled to "uncover" evidence that he did it without a licence.
It's why Brady almost dislocated Roy Keane's hand from shaking it repeatedly, centre-pitch at Lansdowne Road, and why, in 10 counties, Peter Cassells's election literature shows him with his party leader but in the 11th - Meath - has him posing with his footballing brother Joe plus the Sam Maguire.
It's why giggling Fine Gaelers could hardly believe their own boldness as they flashed the "No Thanks!" posters portraying the Tánaiste as a brazen thief, Tom Parlon as a gormless cowboy and Michael McDowell as a Minister who makes deals with IRA killers.
It's also why door-to-door canvassing is a rarity in the European Parliament stakes. If you're looking for 100,000 votes, why waste yourself on a cynical suburb trying to detach resentful folk from EastEnders when you could be swamping packed train stations with your illustrious presence?
It's why after-Mass canvassing is fine but shopping centres are finer. The fact that your average shopper is rushed and distracted is a bonus. No messy confrontations or time-consuming problems, or rants about broken promises.
It's why the candidates, pumped with adrenaline, poll ratings and the ghost of a chance of a photo op, work 17-hour days, criss-crossing constituencies in their fleets of energy-guzzling, customised jeeps and buses - often empty and performing as vast, mobile billboards - intent on outfoxing their own running mates. (Say what you like about Harney and Parlon's ass-and-cart fiasco in 2002, but it was energy efficient).
How much of the internal rivalry is real or PR-driven is debatable. Some commentators hold that Royston's abrupt media withdrawal was ordered from HQ, designed to allow Eoin Ryan some breathing space. The evidence does not support this. Suffice to say that the wars, seen up close, are even more intense.
So who's to blame for all this? The politicians, hapless creatures, blame the media. No stunts equal no cameras equal no votes, they moan.
Two words. Tom McEllistrim. He was the Kerry North candidate in 2002 who treated the media like the ebola virus and was plodding doggedly from door to door while flamboyant party rival, Dan Kiely, was being winched into Questions & Answers by plane, courtesy of FF HQ. McEllistrim skated home.
The other constant complaint is that people's eyes glaze over at the mention of Europe. This is indisputable. But as Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald remarked, the Nice Treaty campaign proved that when given the chance to engage, people do have an appetite for the debate.
The fact is that it's easier to let potential voters drone on about misplaced bollards than to come clean and admit that the town cat will have more control over the blasted bollards than you will if everything goes to plan. Voters don't seem to know the relevant questions to ask (unless they're farmers, lobbyists or want God in the constitution) and, for the most part, the politicians would rather not begin.
When a man wondered what questions people should be asking, Proinsias De Rossa told him: "Ask them what kind of Europe they support. Ask Fianna Fáil do they want properly-regulated, decent working hours or are they opposed to that, because they are . . ." The man nodded agreeably, wondering, no doubt, why he wasn't hearing more like this.
Brian Crowley, the vote-hoovering Munster legend, lists some 80 policy issues to which he has contributed. It's a start. But it won't answer De Rossa's question, without delving a good deal further. And who cares enough?
The trouble with the European Parliament (as opposed, say, to the power gods of the Commission or the Council of Ministers) is how to make it sexy, how to measure its particular achievement and how to link that with any party or individual seeking endorsement. Given that it runs on consensus and committees, your average TD or county councillor, deprived of his usual adversarial role and the resulting oxygen of media attention, would hardly know what to do with himself.
The result is that MEPs often find themselves locked into the headbanging role of fending off the "straight banana stories", as Pat Cox calls them, or explaining why exactly they are unable to reform the expenses lunacy that befouls the institution and all who sit in it. Anyway, as a weary-sounding Cox told the Guardian, the Parliament is not just about "abstractions".
"Concrete example. North Cork. My constituency. Town called Kilcorney - if you blink you wouldn't notice passing through. The telecoms company came one day, removed the call box. We pointed out to the Irish government that an amendment had been made by the European parliament". This required phone companies to maintain certain services even where they were unprofitable. Sorted. "The telephone box," he said, "is back."
The other good news is that it could be worse. For all the moaning, at least we don't have to contend with Joan Collins or Robert Kilroy-Silk.