Minister of State Willie O'Dea has been offered the prospect of a Cabinet seat in a future government if he can help elect the two other Fianna Fáil candidates in the five-seater Limerick East constituency.
After 20 years in politics, Mr O'Dea's standing in Limerick East of up to 42 per cent of the first preference vote makes the scenario of a Fianna Fáil-dominated constituency a possibility.
With a growing clamour among his supporters for him to be awarded a Cabinet seat, he says this has been suggested if he succeeds in bringing his colleagues, Mr Eddie Wade TD, and city councillor Peter Power in his wake.
"It's been said to me by people in authority. That is all I can say." Currently, he and Mr Wade hold a seat, along with Mr Michael Noonan of Fine Gael, Mr Des O'Malley of the Progressive Democrats and Ms Jan O'Sullivan of the Labour Party.
But the vote management will be difficult, he believes, in the more fickle urban part of Limerick East. "In every box in the city where I get a vote and I get a vote in every box, part of that vote is a traditional Fianna Fáil vote that would be going to me anyway because I am on the Fianna Fáil ticket but part of it would be personal. If I stay away from those areas on the basis that one of the other candidates should have complete control of that area, what's going to happen is the Fianna Fáil vote is going to drop."
He aspires to a full ministerial post, he says, but is not obsessive about it. "I have a very good relationship with Bertie Ahern and the indications I am getting from a number of people is there is a very good chance." He has been a minister of state for eight years in three different governments since 1992 and during the past five years has had responsibility for adult education, youth affairs and school transport. He is proud of putting adult education "on the map". On the broader education front, he appeals to the ASTI to consider its position on the Government's benchmarking offer. He has found officials hostile when visiting schools.
"In every staff room, there are one or two people who are employed by the union and they tend to greet you with unremitting hostility as if it is a point of principle that they have to be hostile. I think that's an unhealthy situation." He has not thought about his impending 50th birthday in November. "I have just been too busy to notice it." The other anniversary of 20 years as a TD equally passed unnoticed "in the immediate lead-up to a general election". His colleagues mark 21st anniversaries, he points out.
He spent his first 10 years in the wilderness of the backbenches because of his hostility to Charlie Haughey. Shortly after being elected, he criticised the then Minister for Justice, Mr Seán Doherty, for not doing enough to tackle crime in Limerick. In 1988 he was expelled from the parliamentary party for voting against the government on a hospital closure in Limerick. Last year, he was in hot water over voting with the Government on taxi deregulation while publicly supporting taxi drivers in his home city.
He admits he might be higher up in the party now if he put up and shut up more.
"But I am not a dummy and I have my own views and sometimes I feel a compulsion to express those views, sometimes perhaps more trenchantly than I should or maybe not as diplomatically as I should."
When asked what cause he would like to champion, he is unhesitant about tackling the cost of car insurance. "There is a way to do it. It would be tough. It would take on vested interests. It would be absolutely ruthless and you would have to have the full backing of the Government. The premia in this country are way out of line with premia in other countries because of the system of getting awards for injuries in this country."
From a farming background in Kilteely, in the east of the county, he describes his family as traditional Fianna Fáil supporters. His father was chairman of the local cumann but he had not considered a political career until he was approached to run in the convention following Michael Herbert's retirement.
A LECTURER in Limerick NIHE at the time, he lost his first election, in 1981, but was successful the following year and ever since. A recent TG4 poll put his share of the first preference vote at 42 per cent, more than double the quota and enough to make the possibility of him bringing in his running mates.
He discounts that poll as "widely over-stated" and points to private Fianna Fáil polls putting total support for the party at around 42 per cent, the same as this week's Progressive Democrats poll, conducted by Bluebird Marketing, which shows Mr O'Dea's standing at a more sobering 32 per cent. It also showed Cllr Power being elected at Mr Wade's expense and Mr Noonan being elected but not his running mate, Senator Mary Jackman. The poll also predicts county councillor Tim O'Malley (PDs) will be elected.
Mr O'Dea has a list of 1,000 who will canvass for him but he puts down his poll-topping performances to two words: hard work. "I have been working very hard," he says.
Few would disagree. On Thursday night after a four hour trip back from Dublin and a short stint canvassing on doorsteps, he appeared for three hours on a popular local phone-in show on a pirate radio station.
There he continued his balancing act on the taxi issue, maintaining he is "intellectually" against the deregulation outside Dublin, a stance that will do him no harm with Limerick taxi drivers. On the other hand, he is in favour of deregulating the airwaves which would allow for the legalisation of Radio Limerick One, a sore point for its operators and listeners.
On the radio show, he took calls on subjects as varied as the rise in the price of cranberry juice and the erosion of the old-age pension increase, the penchant of schools for changing books annually, traffic calming measures in Moyross, crime in Southill and the means test for the carer's allowance.
"People feel I am approachable. People feel they can approach me to solve their problems. I have a lot of experience solving problems." Under the ministerial brief of "youth affairs", he is pursuing a campaign to encourage more youth to vote.
It is not specifically the sleaze revealed among Fianna Fáil figures that discourages them, he says. "Young people are refusing to vote because politicians - they don't tend to distinguish between the parties - some politicians appear to have been on the make."
He is well able to extol the virtues of Fianna Fáil as a party that has been "good for Ireland". He puts down the antics of Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor, Denis Foley, Ned O'Keeffe and Beverley Cooper-Flynn as "less than 1 per cent of 1 per cent" of TDs and senators over the years. But he concedes Mr Haughey's time as Taoiseach has given the Fianna Fáil history of people "feathering their own nest" a special focus.
"If you look at the record as a whole, it certainly was a negative factor for Fianna Fáil that Charlie Haughey ever became leader of the party."