OPINION: Being young, bright and good-looking has come in handy for Olwyn Enright on the campaign trail, writes Alison O'Connor.
The man peered at the candidate from inside his car. "I've been looking at you on the posters," he told her, "You're a good-looking bird, all right."
"Charming," she responded, without a hint of gritted teeth. Olwyn Enright left the man with a smile and a request for his first preference. "You'll get it all right, love," he called after her.
She's probably heard it all before and then some. "Don't you just love being called a bird," she remarked mildly and walked quickly towards the next doorstep.
Trying to become a member of Dáil Éireann for the first time is not an easy task. The question of why Ms Enright would want to become a TD does cross one's mind. She is 27 and is indeed good-looking. Her posters are also good, particularly when compared to those of Fianna Fáil, where the faces of the four party candidates (looking a little shifty) are on the one board. All that is missing is the word "Wanted" underneath.
Bright and sociable, Olwyn works as a solicitor in the family practice in Birr. But she's keen to leave that behind and take over her father Tom's seat to become the first female TD in the Laois-Offaly constituency. She has a brother and three sisters, but says she was always the most likely to follow in the family tradition.
Asked about the life that accompanies politics - the clinics, the constant interruptions, being one of a just a handful of female TDs in Leinster House - she answers: "I love it. I realise, though, that it is easy for me to say that. I am a single woman and there is no one dependent on me. I was always interested in things in the community and liked to get involved. I'm used to the lifestyle."
She seems relaxed with being a candidate, displaying no awkwardness in approaching people and asking for their support.
She's accompanied on the canvass in the pretty Co Offaly village of Kinnity by Councillor Percy Clendennen. Percy was first elected in 1974, the year Olwyn was born. She began canvassing for her father 10 years later.
The pair have an easy way about them, having canvassed together for Tom Enright before. Kinnity is his home patch and he fills her in on the occupants of each house. Generally she's well informed herself, knowing many of the names. They all seem to know her.
She makes her way around the village shops and pops into the hairdresser's. "You're all done and ready for the off," she tells the ladies sitting there in the capes and curlers. She joins the queue in the post office to canvass the vote of the postmistress. She asks for a vote from the oldest woman in the village. Percy suggests the Garda station, but she reminds him that they have already canvassed that particular garda.
The pace is brisk. She began canvassing about six weeks ago and reckons that in an urban area one can get through about 200 households in a day but only 100 in rural areas. Her agreement with her party running mate, Co Laois-based Charlie Flanagan, is that they both stay away from each other's counties until five days before voting day; then it's a free-for-all.
In one small grocery shop, it's clear the owner is a Fianna Fáil voter, but there are no hard feelings and although the first preference is gone, a vote further down will be given. The woman is concerned about the scaling-down of the garda presence in the village.
A few doors down, an elderly lady tells Olwyn that her first preference is taken. PD candidate Tom Parlon has already canvassed her and said he would be happy with her third preference. "I can understand your loyalties lie elsewhere," Olwyn tells her, adding she would appreciate her support.
Tom Parlon toyed with both parties before choosing the PDs. He almost certainly would have caused problems for the Enright campaign if he had chosen Fine Gael. Asked if she was glad he opted for the PDs, she simply says: "I was."
There are certainly number ones for her here. On another doorstep she remembers, as she rings the doorbell, that she was at UCD with one of the sons of the house. There is a warm welcome. The woman wants to talk about her daughter, who is a junior doctor and works incredibly long hours. Olwyn tells her of a friend at the same stage of her medical career who was travelling recently from Tullamore to a Galway hospital for a job interview. On the way, she crashed and broke her sternum. The interview was conducted in the hospital bed. She's still waiting to hear if she got the job.
Earlier, while canvassing on the outskirts of Birr, they arrive at the home of a Fine Gaeler who had done some canvassing for Percy in the past. Things "don't seem to be going so well," he tells the two of them, referring to the situation nationally for the party. "Things are a long way out."
Olwyn tells him that all is not lost. She doesn't avoid the issue, but is clearly not interested in concentrating on the negative.
"It's possible still," she tells him. "You never know. It's an uphill battle all right but it's not insurmountable. If we get it right in places like North Tipperary with [Fine Gael candidate] Noel Coonan, we will be all right."
The biggest issue she is hearing on the doorsteps is health. The stories are individual ones from people who have had bad experiences of our ailing health system. In the country, the farmers are cross with the bureaucracy they have to go through. The great ribbon development debate is raging here, too, with planning permission being mentioned with regularity. In Birr, there are concerns about the lack of industry.
If elected, Olwyn Enright says she looks forward to dealing with all these problems and helping to sort them out. From Kinnity, she headed back into Birr for a funeral. Even the prospect of attending, as a TD, as many funerals as some undertakers have to, doesn't seem to faze her. "It's all a part of what you do."