Victim hailed as the victor

You could boil it down to one line: "Up ye girl ye." No one actually shouted that, but it was the sentiment behind much of the cheering that greeted Mary McAleese in Clare and Limerick yesterday. Not only was she the poll-topping dream candidate, she was now the bruised but unbowed victim of media hounding and sinister leaks. Her slightly more relaxed election SWAT team basked in the warmth of the welcome.

The party faithful who wore their hearts on their sleeves seem to have crowned their queen of hearts.

Words of approval were on all supporters' lips, and especially in the vicinity of anyone with a notebook. "She's confident-looking this morning" (said like a doting parent). "And isn't she beautiful. She's got the elegance and everything" (said with sisterly admiration).

In O'Connell Square in Ennis a little old lady on a stick gazed into Prof McAleese's grey eyes and said solemnly, "You're all right, do ye hear me? You're home and dry. You can smile at all of them."

And she did.

At a gathering of cumainn members in an Ennis hotel, she told them she had been given plenty of "hurling tips" on how to deal with recent events.

"I hope the campaign doesn't get any rougher. And I hope it might be able to reflect some of that dignity and respect that the Presidency deserves." Reporters caught in Sunday night's scrum at the Great Southern Hotel in Galway nodded approvingly.

At a family centre in Ennis Gerry Collins MEP almost leapt from a doorway when he saw a reporter trying to squeeze past, and ushered us in like long-lost relatives. He was trying to "make amends", he said with a twinkle.

And then, as chairman of the Fianna Fail Making Amends Committee, he treated reporters to a hearty lunch of steak and spuds.

Prof McAleese said Brid Rodgers had "clarified her views", and these were that "she doesn't regard me as a person who ever promoted a Sinn Fein agenda".

She said she had only ever met Ms Rodgers once in her "entire life", and she would not be drawn when asked if she felt that Ms Rodgers had fallen short of denying she ever linked Prof McAleese with Sinn Fein.

Overnight it had appeared that Prof McAleese's language had hardened in describing the leaks. Referring to them exclusively as mischievous on Monday, she added the more damning description of malignant and malicious yesterday.

But the "Irish people" were cleverer than that, she insisted.

"They knew the context. They knew why it was being done. It was no accident that I was ahead in the polls and I suppose I was an obvious target."

And in a surprise meeting of minds she agreed "wholeheartedly" with Fine Gael's Michael Noonan that Northern politicians should stop commenting on the election.

"Certainly if their comments are going to be based on disinformation, or if they are sectarian in nature, it would be better if they were not made. I think all of us would appreciate a very measured response to what is going on here."

In Limerick a triumphant crowd marched down O'Connell Street with Prof McAleese, flanked by FF TDs Willie O'Dea and Eddie Wade.

First they marched down one side of the street and then turned and marched up the other.

A handful of Derek Nally supporters wandered up the other side at one point.

"Nally will win," they shouted.

"Yer on your own," said one of the Fianna Fail faithful, stating the more than obvious.

At the University of Limerick Prof McAleese was asked why she did not support a Sinn Fein agenda when she grew up in an area where most people did. Was she not rejecting her friends?

Prof McAleese said she had heard Ardoyne described as republican all her life, but "I lived there as one of a few tiny number of Catholics in unionist Ardoyne. My friends come from that community.,"

And she had "always had a difficulty with Sinn Fein".