In the 1992 campaign, Charlie McCreevy stayed at home in the belief it was the best way to get votes. This time he has raised the tempo a notch or two.Kathy Sheridan joined him on his amble "She said 'I'm an ASTI member. Need I say more?' and I took the 'need I say more' as my cue to move on"
Apart from his admiration for the John Prescott approach to custard-throwers - "God that was a great left hook" - Charlie McCreevy could be a model for the National Safety Council. He keeps the precautionary spare shirt and suit in the car in the event of flying desserts and he has to be one of the slowest, to the point of loitering, canvassers in campaigning history.
By the cut of him, he and the Boyle custard thrower clearly agree it's all a bit of a circus. And he is living proof you can buck the system and survive.
In 1992, when Labour was circulating the constituency with "McCreevy's Dirty Dozen", McCreevy simply stayed at home.
"That's true, I didn't canvass one house. I took the view that the best way of getting votes was not to canvass. That's what I do. Take a view, act on it and hold my nerve. But you have to hold your nerve, that's the trick. It's easy to make a decision, the hardest thing is to hold your nerve."
The view this time, apparently, is to show willing. So here he is, with henchman Cllr P.J. Sheridan, rambling "like a couple of aul' wans" - to quote a more assiduous canvasser - through a mixed working class/white collar housing estate in north Kildare.
P.J. knows most of them and Charlie some of them. If they draw a blank, the Minister fronts up: "What's your name?" No one says shove off and mind your own business. "This is a Molloy from Sallins," prompts P.J., as they dawdle up to a door.
"I know well who she is . . . I saw your sister at the Sallins football dance," he tells the woman, as he settles in for a chat about rasher-slicing in the local shop in the old days and good young footballers.
We're on the canvass a good 45 minutes and have covered all of - oh, as many as six houses (two of them empty while the occupants are sunning themselves in Spain) - before we meet a concerned citizen, who happens to be an ASTI member.
ASTI members are to be avoided. The Minister had already met one "with fire in her eyes, who looked ready for some all-in mud wrestling . . . She said 'I'm an ASTI member. Need I say more?' and I took the 'need I say more' as my cue to move on. I don't think that was what she intended", he says mischievously.
Anyway, this one is of the lesser-spotted Non-Rabid variety and only wants to tell the Minister of his concerns about the divisiveness generated by the lay supervisors. "They earn as much as I do . . . the principal and vice-principal don't come into the staffroom anymore". He also believes last year's ordinary level Leaving Cert students lost out as a result of the industrial action.
The Minister sums up the ASTI strategy - "war from day one" - finishing with the view that "even the people in the 100 Years' War had to sit down and talk at the end of the day".
The teacher nods miserably. There's a question from a clued-in 17-year-old about Stadium Ireland. The young fellow approves but thinks the costings are laughably high. There's a nurse who has spent a week in Naas hospital as a patient, on a trolley. "There were 13 patients on 13 trolleys, one a 93-year-old woman."
She gets the spiel about the great new hospital in progress there, about there being 37 per cent more health employees than five years ago and - with a sidelong look at this reporter - a quote from an Irish Times report ("last week, page 10, left-hand page so you'd have to really work to find it"), which suggested Ireland now has a health spend above the EU average.
A laughing woman comes to the door with two young children and orders him to "keep the money coming". "And you keep up production," he replies, reminding her she'd be getting "a pile of money" on Tuesday, when the double dose of child benefit kicks in.
Two hours later, on an estate of hard-working young and middle-aged couples, there hasn't been a single question about sleaze, crime, tax individualisation, transport or inequality. He says he's only been asked about individualisation once - "and she had four children and said herself that the child benefit would go a long way" - and once about tribunals. "And he only wanted to know if with all the money that's been spent, would there be any prosecutions at the end . . . I didn't like to mention that because of the immunity thing for witnesses, that all that evidence would have to be thrown in the bin and proceedings started again if people were to be prosecuted."
It's the Minister's considered view that "people are content . . . You see these commentators saying that society is unhappy. I don't find that at all. I think those people are trying to write themselves into a state of unhappiness. It's more or less a case of 'weren't we happier when we were poor?' Well, I'm telling you that the only people who say that kind of thing were never hungry . . ."
In fact, he reckons that most people are so happy that they "want to retain the status quo . . . but that means they'll have to come out to vote. But are they so content that they'll stay sitting by the fire?"
But hang on . . . There's a call from a press officer. The Irish Times is forecasting an overall majority.
"God, we need that like a hole in the head," moans P.J. Better speed up