Outside the Ship pub in Cormackstown, near Thurles, on Thursday afternoon, a small canvass team has gathered. "If you're looking for anybody to say something against Michael Lowry, you've come to the wrong place," says one of them, smiling. Liam Reid reports
Cormackstown is in the parish of Holycross, where Michael Lowry was born, reared and now lives with his family. Lowry is king here.
The canvassers were there, not directly for the former minister himself, but for his 27-year-old son, Micheál, who is running for the county council elections instead of his father.
Dressed in a suit and open-necked shirt, speaking with a soft voice and strong Tipperary accent, in looks he is very much a chip off the old block. And, like his father, he is totally at ease with the small band of supporters gathered in the Ship pub.
Micheál Lowry is one of three children of current and former cabinet ministers who are standing in the local elections in North Tipperary.
Michael Smith jnr, the son of the Minister for Defence, is standing for North Tipperary County Council in the Roscrea-Templemore area, while Micheál Lowry is running in the Thurles area. Orla O'Kennedy, the daughter of former Fianna Fáil minister and EU commissioner, Michael O'Kennedy, is running for Nenagh Town Council. The three know at first hand the harshness of electoral politics, yet this has not dissuaded them.
Both Fianna Fáil ministers were intense political rivals and lost their seats at various stages in the competitive North Tipperary constituency, while Micheál Lowry readily acknowledges the fact that his father now bears one of the most notorious names in Irish politics.
All three demur when asked about future political ambition, giving the stock political response of there being no current vacancies. They accept that they are seen as future candidates.
When asked, they all give the same reason for putting their names forward - they were born into politics.
They also have a common belief that a combination of a known political brand and their youth will see them elected in what is a fairly crowded political field in all three elections.
Orla O'Kennedy did give a lot of thought to her decision, however. Having spent most of her childhood and teenage years away from Nenagh, she returned home in 1997 to run her father's constituency office. She did consider putting her name forward four years ago for selection when her father announced his retirement. Instead, she set up her own business in Nenagh, a crèche which now employs 10 people.
Blond and dressed in a smart grey suit, she looks every bit the successful young businesswoman rather than a prospective town council candidate.
"I did give serious thought to running for the last general election," she says. "But I decided not to in the end, because I felt I was too young and not experienced enough, and I wanted to do a lot of other things first, such as opening my own business, a crèche, which I did last year."
Back at his father's office in Thurles, 27-year-old Micheál Lowry says he had no such doubts.
The eldest of three, he worked in Dublin for seven years before spending a year away in Australia, returning home last June. His trip was not a voyage of self-discovery. "I always knew I was going to end up back in Tipp," he says. When he came home his father, who gave up his council seat because of the dual mandate rule, asked him to run. He agreed.
Running for election was always in the back of his mind, he says. "Since I was old enough to answer a phone, I've been involved in politics."
He is also sanguine about the notorious reputation of his father at a national level. "In politics, as in life, things happen." He used to get annoyed about the media coverage of his father, but not any more. "At the end of the day, you sit back and look at the larger picture."
His father's fall from grace and the intense scrutiny he and his family have experienced has not been a deterrent. "As the fella says, I've seen the highs and lows." He also believes that his father's experiences can actually be of help to him. "He's gone ahead of me and I know where he slipped up."
Although he believes that the refrigeration company his father started, Streamline Enterprises - the source of his initial downfall - could have been even more successful had his father stuck to his business career, the family would still have had to live their lives in the public gaze.
"You're going to get grief anyway. Whether you're in politics or business, once people know you, they'll knock you, no matter what you are."
In his father's office in Roscrea, Michael Smith jnr (30) tells how it was a family decision that he would stand in the local elections.
The only son in a family of seven, he and his six sisters sat down last year to decide who would run.
"It was always expected that one of us would take the plunge. When you walk down the stairs in the morning, it's politics. Whenever you pick up the phone, it's politics. It's in the blood, second nature to us."
Living at home and running the family farm outside Roscrea, he was seen as the natural choice to run for election. Stocky, tanned and healthy-looking, Michael Smith jnr does not have the pallor of an indoor political life. His highlighted hair belies an outdoor job, one which he says he loves.
Unlike the other two dynastical candidates, Michael is engaged. "It's been a baptism of fire for her," he says of his fiancée, Mary, a teacher. "She has no interest in politics, but when I said I was thinking of standing, she told me to do whatever I was happy with."
For Smith and O'Kennedy, the political reality of proportional representation is that, if they get elected, it will likely be at the expense of a party colleague. But this is not something they are unduly concerned about.
"It does split and divide, but that's one of the facts of life," says Orla O'Kennedy. "If you're in politics, it's a reality that you have to accept. You may lose your seat."
Micheál Lowry is facing a somewhat different electoral challenge. His father polled nearly three quotas at the last council election in 1999, and other candidates are targeting this, telling potential voters that "Young Lowry" does not need the votes.
It is a message he says he is determined to counter.
While the core activists in the "Lowry party" are Fine Gael, Michael Lowry's appeal is much wider, according to his son. But Micheál is not so sure that the personal vote his father received will hold up in the same way for him. He reckons that he will be lucky to get a quota.
Micheál believes that his father's success had a lot to do with his ability to get things done on behalf of people and being able to tell them straight when things could not be done. "It makes no odds to him who they are or what background they have. It's a basic principle with him. If he's asked to do something, he's also straight with them, and he tells them if it can't be done. At the end of the day, people respect that."
If elected, Micheál Lowry sees his role as helping his father, taking on some of the representation work he would have done.
He does not believe that his father has plans to retire from politics any time soon. "He's only 50. If he didn't have politics, I don't know what he'd have. He'd get bored without it."