Noon on Monday last and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, has already smiled for 100 individual photographs on the rostrum of the Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone.
The occasion is the presentation of the National Craft Certificate Awards to FAS apprentices who have completed their training.
The apprentices are from all over the midlands and as Ms O'Rourke makes the presentation, she has a brief word with each and then poses for a photograph. She smiles at each flash.
She has been awake for five hours and has arrived at the packed venue at 11 a.m. She has already visited a creche and has been photographed there, too.
When the last of the apprentices get their certificates, they are called forward again. This time there is a county by county group photograph. More smiles for Longford, for Westmeath, for Offaly for Laois.
"Every one of them is in full-time employment. That is a wonderful thing to be able to say. They are great young people. They are our future," she says.
It is a patient Mary who goes on to mingle with the friends and families of the young people. More photographs and a final one with the staff of the midlands region of FAS, who present her with her first bouquet of flowers of the day.
Outside the lakeside hotel where she grew up she poses again, this time against the stunning background of the Shannon, for The Irish Times.
She remembers growing up there in an old Queen Anne style house which her late father, Paddy Lenihan, ran as a hotel. She points out the line of the old building, which is now only a tiny fraction of the extended hotel.
"Good times," she recalls. "Growing up here was fun. It was a lovely place and my father was great fun. I enjoyed my life here and the river was part of that."
It was there that her father taught her and her brothers to swim. Her favourite brother was Brian, whom she misses both in her private and public life.
She was the only one of her family who could claim to be a true "Athlonian", she said. Her mother, Mary, was pregnant with her when she arrived in the town.
Her father had worked in the Civil Service, in the Department of Finance and later Revenue. Her brothers, including Brian, had been born in Dundalk.
But the former Taoiseach, the late Sean Lemass, had recognised the ability of Paddy Lenihan and had singled him out and asked him to go to Athone to manage a Statefunded cotton plant which employed nearly 1,000 people for nearly 20 years.
"My father was not Fianna Fail. If he had any politics, it would not have been Fianna Fail, even though he was from Clare. My mother, on the other hand, was a through-and-through Fianna Failer from Sligo," she said.
When her father was asked to go into local politics, he was going as an independent until persuaded by Fianna Fail to run for it. He went on to become a TD. The Lenihans are now the largest family dynasty in Dail Eireann.
There are Kitts and Brutons, de Valeras Aherns and Mitchells, two by two, but there are three Lenihans, the Minister and her two nephews, Brian and Conor.
"I think it was Conor who said recently that if we got another Lenihan into the Dail we could form our own party which would be the same size as the PDs and then we could all get a seat at the cabinet," she laughs.
Her phone is ringing. The Minister is monitoring talks between CIE and the unions. The news is not hopeful. She wants to go back to her home to make more calls and "tidy the place up".
Home for the Minister and her husband, Enda, is in the suburbs of Athlone. It doubles on Saturdays as a clinic, where her constituents can come until six in the evening. On Sundays, she said, she rests.
Early afternoon finds the Minister in Mullingar fulfilling a promise she made to some local women to visit their project which provides creche care, homework clubs and a drop-in centre for local people.
She is on her knees surrounded by children, an environment she knows well as a former teacher. She is smiling again, shaking hands. The project at Ennell House is about self-help. Mullingar Community Action Network is driven by people who want to help the local community with its many problems.
It is now Mary the Interceder. Could she get more money from Government to help? She makes no promises but it is clear that she has been moved by what she has seen.
"I'll have to ask Charlie McCreevy. He might be able to help. I am very impressed with what is happening here," she said.
She is still smiling as she gets into her car and heads for the Greville Arms, the comfortable provincial hotel in the centre of the Westmeath capital where the lobby is crowded with elderly people.
There she is met by the party faithful, who bring her upstairs to a meeting room prior to her meeting with the old folks, who want to question her about issues such as the lack of public transport.
Half an hour later, she is back in her car, heading for Athlone to open an art exhibition in the Dean Crowe Hall on the Connacht side of the town.
On the road to Athlone, the Minister says she has "rude health". She has tonnes of energy and likes meeting people. Her smiles, she says, are genuine.
She is, after all, one of the Three Marys: the three most powerful women in Irish politics are the President, Mrs McAleese, the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, and Mary O'Rourke.
She understood, she said, Mary Harney's sense of isolation. Being a woman at the level she had attained was very difficult and challenging.
However, she had her husband there to support her and help her when things got tough. "I sometimes offload on him on a Friday night and he is marvellous. I don't know how he puts up with it sometimes. He is a rock of sense," she said.
When in Dublin, she says, she meets her two "marvellous daughters-in-law" and they sometimes eat out or go to the theatre if her work allows.
As we travel back to Athlone she is updated from her office in Dublin on the signallers' dispute. She arranges a 10 p.m. meeting with the secretary of her Department in Dublin. The Athlone Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme is a full-time education and training course organised by Co Westmeath Vocational Education Committee, a scheme put in place when Mary O'Rourke was Minister for Education.
The Minister officially opens an art exhibition of works created by the people who have taken the course and sits through almost another hour of speeches and presentations of certificates, some of them her ex-pupils.
The Minister is presented with a painting by the pupils. She smiles for the photographers again, and on her way to Dublin she calls into Kilbeggan Secondary School to launch the transition year there.
Shortly after 10 p.m. she is in Dublin with her officials, discussing the impending rail strike and getting papers together for the Cabinet meeting the following day.
Why does she do it? She cannot answer other than to say that she likes being a politician and that it offers the opportunity to bring about change.
She is determined to run again at the next election and in the meantime will continue to work at the same hectic pace. "I love it, what more can I say?"