HIS name is Joe Higgins, Councillor Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party. Her name is Sandra. They are engaged in a dialogue of the deaf on a Clondalkin doorstep.
He's a Kerry man and he looks and sounds like the most reliable, old-fashioned kind of country schoolteacher.
She's a Dublin girl and she's been doing herself up, though it's only early afternoon.
How else would you pass the time when you're a dreamy 18-year-old with a marvellous hair-style and strappy mules and a wisp of a black dress.
"Do you not think it's important to vote?" he asks.
"Well, like, I'm not that interested in politics and that."
"But if we sent you a card to register would you sign it, do you think?"
Joe's stalwart helper, Kay, pops up from behind him to close in on Sandra Citizen. "And if you registered would you give your number one to Joe?"
He has forgotten that that's what he's on the doorstep for, wasting valuable canvassing time, as he constantly does, in talking about politics instead of talking about getting elected. Sandra smiles helplessly at everyone.
She's the only human being in 20 or 30 houses who hasn't immediately said, when they saw who was at the door: "You don't even have to ask", or "The two of us wouldn't vote for anyone else, Mr Higgins", or "How're ya Joe? You'll be getting my number one, Joe. You're the only one that does anything for the people around here."
The support for Joe Higgins is so unanimous that it is embarrassing. Even the dangerous looking teenage boys lolling around obviously looking for something bold to do call out "vote for Joe" as his banger zooms past.
It is not that he makes the slightest attempt to charm. He is earnest to a fault. If he isn't in Dail Eireann already it is because the deprived council housing estates and the modest private estates of Blanchardstown and Clondalkin do not comprise Dublin West. There's Lucan as well, and Castleknock. Leafy places. But Joe Higgins believes he has support there too due to his high profile against water charges and his record in opposing land rezoning.
But it is surely on the littered grey streets with their mean breeze-block walls that the kind of fights he has been in are best appreciated.
To keep Blanchardstown hospital open, to get the town centre built, to get a drug-addiction treatment centre of a kind the community will accept - all local issues, and, with the exception of the Pat the Baker's strike, not particularly connected with socialism.
Joe Higgins is a socialist, and his helpers around the kitchen table in his typical house on a typical local estate are socialists. The socialist ideal keeps them going. But it doesn't keep the electorate going.
"I've a puddle outside my gate all the time where the shores are done wrong, and my young fella has asthma and he's more in hospital than out of it, and the first politician to get that puddle fixed is getting my vote," a woman announces. And she's not one bit shy about it.
Joe Higgins's mother has come up from Annascaul to mind the house during the campaign. She moves softly around the half of the kitchen that is not covered with papers, making tea.
"What does Joe actually live on?" we ask.
"The wind, I'd say," she replies. She has arrived too late to save the ivy on top of the press. It is as dead as a pot plant can be. Things are serious here. Joe's sister has lent her mobile phone for the duration.
Two helpers are working with Biro and jotters on lists for a financial appeal: known sympathisers, particularly from the water charges protest, will be asked to give £10 or £20 to the Higgins campaign. The Socialist Party had a race night the previous Friday, and they've been having fundraising socials.
It is a long way from bumping into Ben Dunne in a generous mood.
Last time, all it needed was 176 people to have chosen a different second preference for Joe Higgins to be in the Dail. If he gets there, "I want to advance the interests of ordinary people", he says.
The boy next door to Sandra said: "I'm voting for you because of what you're doing up at the centre about drugs and stuff."
The extraordinary might happen yet.