On the campaign trailFine Gael is delighted with the energy that rival candidates have created, writes Frank McNally
When Enda Kenny first promised to "electrify" Fine Gael, maybe the European election campaign in Ireland East was the sort of thing he had in mind.
If you believe the rumours, party candidates Avril Doyle and Mairéad McGuinness have been getting on like a pair of touching wires.
Officially, neither has anything bad to say about the other. But then again, the McGuinness campaign posters have nothing at all to say about Doyle. And while the Doyle posters urge continued preferences for the running mate, the advice may be lost on those without strong eyesight.
The decision not to divide the constituency between candidates has increased the poster count, and the competition.
McGuinness has yet to visit the south-east, but there are no holds barred in this contest, and Doyle has already made forays into her rival's Louth-Meath stronghold. Party elders are revelling in the scrap, meanwhile, and in the comparative anonymity of the Fianna Fáil campaign.
In Navan with McGuinness this week, Enda Kenny was clearly enjoying the success of his rural electrification scheme. "A bit of friction sometimes brings out the best in people," he said.
The women themselves are polite when the questions arise. "Despite all the media coverage, Avril and I do talk to each other," says McGuinness. "The stories are never as good as the headline." This from a journalist.
And it's only on the poster issue that Doyle borders on criticism. "It's not something I've raised," she says, sitting in the canteen of a mart at Ballymahon, Co Longford, "but traditional Fine Gael people are upset that hers don't mention continued preferences".
Why does she think it was omitted? "You'd have to ask her." Should party headquarters not insist on standard formats? "You'd have to ask headquarters."
The mention of "traditional" Fine Gael people is telling. Another phrase Doyle uses is that she and her running mate have "different qualities".
In her case, the qualities are those of a party veteran: former TD, senator, mayor of Wexford, twice junior minister, and now "the only candidate with practical working knowledge of the European Parliament".
She doesn't expand on what qualities her running mate has, but the point is made anyway.
Bossiness is another of the MEP's qualities. When a livestock lorry blocks her campaign bus at the mart, she orders someone to get the keys and move it, before she does: "It wouldn't be the first time I drove a lorry."
Then, after the bus has provided the backdrop for an RTÉ interview, she appoints herself TV director and suggests her helpers board the vehicle so they can be filmed getting off, "as if they're arriving".
One man protests that they'll bring "cow shite" into the bus on their shoes. But Doyle is undaunted: "Don't worry about bringing cowshite onto the bus, there'll still be plenty of it out here."
There were no cows in Navan, but the McGuinness team faced other challenges.
The front page of the Meath Chronicle headlined a Fine Gael initiative to lower parking charges, which Navan man and TD Damien English blames for "strangling" the town.
The shopping centre is indeed unusually subdued, and the shortage of canvassing targets is dramatically highlighted when Enda Kenny sits down on a bench beside a young couple with a baby, and turns on the charm.
The couple stare at him, apparently in blank incomprehension. A canvasser points out that this is "Enda Kenny", but the clue is no help, and the young man looks preoccupied by the suspicion that the smooth-talking stranger might be putting moves on his woman.
Undeterred, the Fine Gael leader attempts to introduce his candidate anyway, whereupon the couple notice the cameras and object strongly. Then the baby starts crying.
Clutching what remains of its dignity, the Fine Gael team withdraws from the scene.
But in a shop nearby, an assistant covers her face when the canvassers and cameras approach.
Maybe it's because Navan is in one of its moods that McGuinness herself seems subdued. Party supporters and journalistic colleagues alike speak of a woman who is warm, witty, fiercely energetic, and liable to sing "the Turfman from Ardee" at the drop of a hat.
But colleagues also privately wonder whether she is thick-skinned enough for the bear-pit of politics, which makes Celebrity Farm look like Little House on the Prairie. Today, at any rate, she seems serious and reserved.
A surreal on-street encounter with outgoing Fianna Fáil MEP Jim Fitzsimons lightens the mood.
Addressing him as "the man in the dapper suits", McGuinness invites sartorial advice for the would-be European politician.
Fitzsimons makes a joke about "going around in my underwear", to which McGuinness quips: "Well, I certainly won't be going around in your underwear." It's a strange town, Navan.
There's no mistaking Fine Gael's genuine happiness at having two high-profile candidates. But when Longford senator James Bannon suggests that both can be elected on June 11th, he is reintroduced to hard-nosed reality by colleagues.
Noses don't come any harder than the one belonging to Louis J. Belton, former TD and cousin of Avril Doyle, who argues that a "political base" is the only currency that buys seats.
Told that McGuinness has a "very strong personality", he asks: "Do you seriously think, James, that people ever vote for anyone because of a strong personality?"
Doyle too dismisses Bannon's two-seat theory in the manner of a Mother Superior dealing with a pupil who has trouble with maths.
"If it was a four-seater, there might be a chance, because Mairéad is a very good candidate. But in a three-seater, frankly, we have to be realistic."
Reminded that she unseated the Fine Gael incumbent in 1999, and asked if McGuinness could be her nemesis this time, she pauses for a few seconds and says: "No".
Back in Navan, a Fine Gael supporter on the street appears to have arrived at a similar conclusion, urging McGuinness: "Don't let the general election slip. You want to be thinking about that soon."