Today, Eamon Ryan may get Pat Rabbitte's backing. Joe Humphreys profiles the likely presidential challenger
If Eamon Ryan is President next St Patrick's Day one can be certain he will refrain from the sort of antics he got up to exactly nine years earlier. Then, he could be found dressed as an angel on Dublin's O'Connell Street thrashing to pieces a papier-mâché car purportedly driven by Lucifer.
That was Ryan at his most radical - an energetic founding chairman of the Dublin Cycling Campaign and vociferous champion of the rights of Ireland's less-fashionable road users.
He is passionate about the environment. But any attempt to characterise Ryan as "one of the crazies", either then or today, is well wide of the mark. The piece of street theatre he designed actually won an award in the 1996 St Patrick's Day parade - so impressed were the judges by its cleverness.
Dubbed by his peers as the thinking-man's Green, the Dublin South TD is devoid of the histrionics of many of his fellow environmentalists. Within the Green Party, he is a key figure in the "realos" camp, so called because of its allegedly more realistic outlook, compared to the fundamentalist or "fundies" element.
He prides himself on reasoning rather than ranting and raving, and it's an approach which has impressed many along the way. The leader of the Labour Party, Pat Rabbitte, this week described Ryan as the most talented of the new TDs to enter the Dáil in 2002.
Born in July 1963 as the second of four children to Bob and Mary Ryan, Eamon grew up in Dundrum, south Dublin, where he went to Holy Cross National School. His father, from west Cork, held a prominent position in the Munster and Leinster Bank, and would later become the first public relations manager of AIB.
Ryan received his secondary schooling at Gonzaga College where he debated and played rugby. Gonzaga was perhaps unique in Ireland in that it provided an O-level course in ecology, something which awoke the environmental consciences of Ryan and some of his schoolmates - among them Ciaran Cuffe, who would join him in the Greens, and Michael Smith, who would become head of An Taisce.
Around this time, Ryan was also heavily affected by witnessing first hand a fatal car crash.
The scene played on his mind for many years and would form the basis for his antipathy towards the automobile.
He graduated from UCD with a commerce degree and got a few jobs in marketing in what were then depressed economic times.
Seeking adventure, he left the country and worked his way across the globe, taking jobs in New Orleans and Sydney before driving a convertible van across the Australian bush and returning to Europe by rail through China and Russia. Once home, he began a two-year period of unemployment - a period in which, he admits, his "confidence" went.
It was while he was stuffing envelopes for the Labour Party - a then time-consumer nixer - that he thought of setting up Irish Cycling Safaris, a business which would expand into a European-wide enterprise. In recent years, he has handed over the running of the company to his sister, Marion, and her husband, and has signalled his intention to sell out completely to the couple to concentrate on politics.
In 1996, Ryan met the writer Victoria White at a set-dancing event, and the couple married in west Cork two years later. They have four children: Jack (5), three-year-old twins, Tom and Ino, and Róise, who will be two next month.
In 1998, Ryan was co-opted onto Dublin City Council in John Gormley's seat, and the following year was elected to the post. As a councillor, he was seen as a refreshing change: well-read, presentable and willing to make unpopular decisions if he thought they were right - such as supporting environmental service charges. More recently, Ryan has spoken out against the proliferation of sports utility vehicles (SUVs), arguing that they should be charged coming into Dublin city, as is the case in central London.
As head of the Dublin Cycling Campaign for 10 years, he can take some credit for bringing about the introduction of bicycle lanes in the city - an unheard of concept when he began campaigning in the late 1980s.
In 2002, Ryan was elected to the Dáil, and promptly followed Tony Gregory's example by declining to wear a tie. He has since become something of a bête noir for the Superintendent of the House, not only because of his relatively casual dress but because of his habit of letting his children run riot in the yard of Leinster House.
The four toddlers create an air of restrained chaos everywhere they go, and last March, the family home in Ranelagh almost burnt to the ground after an innocent game with matches went wrong.
Ryan is unapologetic about having his children about him, and while he does not deliberately groom a New Man image, the combination of good looks and the "caring father" figure has drawn him many female admirers in and around Leinster House.
The TD has no car, although he does sometimes hire one when his family goes on holidays. His normal mode of transport is a bicycle, complete with a regularly occupied child's seat.
In his spare time, Ryan enjoys reading and outdoor pursuits such as fishing and whale-watching. He also paints and once dabbled with the idea of making the pursuit a full-time one.
He describes himself as a Christian rather than a Catholic, although he brings his children to the Roman Catholic Church in Rathmines each Sunday. Some of the children were baptised in the Catholic Church, others in the Church of Ireland.
As for vices, Ryan is an ex-smoker - of cigarettes, and the occasional "joint", as he revealed on RTÉ's Marian Finucane Show yesterday. "I did inhale, yeah," he admitted.
Asked was it a happy experience, he replied: "Oh well, yeah. The difficulty, I think, is it can be very attractive. The concern I have is that it can have repercussions in terms of psychiatric illnesses."
That Ryan (41) was asked the question in the first place is an indication of how different he is to other presidential candidates. Can one imagine either Dana or Mary McAleese being quizzed the same way?
Even if the Dubliner can defy the stereotypes, a question remains about whether he has the broad appeal to win a presidential election. Certainly, he believes so.
"I think you can be enterprising and concerned," he said yesterday in reference to his political philosophy. Dare one say, a bridge-builder in the making?