The toughest questions relate to local matters, Paul Cullen discovered while canvassing with election candidates.
'It's not the abuse, nor the long hours walking the streets when I could be watching the telly," a foot-sore local election candidate confides near the end of a busy canvass this week.
"I can handle the young guys with the tinnies throwing shapes, and the dogs that nip at your ankles. It's just the bloody indifference that gets to you." As if to prove his point, the 19-year-old girl in the belly-top who opens the next door he knocks on announces: "I'm not really into this voting thing, you know. I've had a lot going on in my life over the past year . . . I don't really have time for this."
The next day, at the races in Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath, I ask three old-stagers their views on the election. "Sure I might as well vote, aren't we lucky to have one at all," says one, without enthusiasm. "I suppose I'll be voting, but I'll be voting against," his friend adds.
This wouldn't be the first election campaign not to burn with instant controversy. The mostly polite reception afforded candidates on the doorstep doesn't make for catchy headlines. Local and European elections, plus a referendum that is clearly confusing many people, doesn't pack the same punch as a general election.
But the current campaigns raise questions about the evolving nature of Irish politics. What are the issues? Are there any issues? What do we want from our politicians? How do we relate to them? Indeed, do we, in this era of affluence, relate to them in any meaningful way?
The old ways of politicking are evident in veteran Labour councillor Dermot Lacey's canvass of Beech Hill, a traditionally working-class enclave of Donnybrook, Dublin, last Tuesday evening.
Lacey, surrounded by a team of friends and family, canvasses familiar territory at speed. He points out his own house and, nearby, his parents' home. This ground is easy meat for him; everyone knows him and tells me how he dealt with their problems.
"It's about trust, knowing who someone is," says one man. "He's helped us when we had minor inquiries and that's good enough for our vote."
There are the usual questions about council flats and other benefits. But even here, change is evident. There are 04 BMWs and Jeeps parked on the road, and houses where no one is at home or has a vote. "Houses here are out of the league of the ordinary Joe Soap now," one man says.
"Builders and business types are coming in and letting them out to students and the like. There's nothing any politician can do about that; we're too near the city centre. But it's the community that's suffering." And the politicians too. As Ireland's demography changes, and communities change, the election candidates are increasingly frozen out. Local knowledge has diminished, and counts for less, as whole areas become terra incognita.
The candidates are literally kept outside the gated estates springing up around Dublin, where electronic touch-pads and CCTV cameras control access. Wendy Hederman, a first-time PD candidate in Pembroke, says she has had to master a new political technique, canvassing by intercom.
"You go to some of these modern developments, and find no more than one in 10 people at home. And of those, maybe one in four is the person on the register. The rest have moved on, disappeared," she says.
Change hasn't been confined to Dublin. Throughout Leinster, and outside many of our big cities, rural areas have seen a huge influx of commuter residents, many of them living in freshly-built estates.
"You'd be lost in them sometimes," says one Fine Gael councillor from Co Meath. "People head off to work at 7 a.m. and they're not back till the evening. There'd be no question of calling in on them during the day." If affluence and busyness have bred indifference, politicians at local level are also seen as powerless in the face of development. "Sure what does it matter what you think, it will get bulldozed through," one voter says to Hederman of local building plans.
"Where were the councillors when this was voted through?" A householder in north Dublin, is asking Fianna Fáil's Geraldine Wall about a proposal to build social and affordable housing nearby. "By the time we got wind of it, it was too late."
The perception of powerlessness is reasonably accurate, according to Dr Aodh Quinlivan of UCC's department of government. In many cases, he says, part-time local politicians only "rubber-stamp" decisions taken by the full-time managers and planners, and few have the expertise required for complex planning issues.
Even in areas where politicians had powers, such as in waste management, they have abdicated them. Local government has not recovered from the "doomsday" when domestic rates were abolished in the 1970s, says Dr Quinlivan.
All politics is local, Tipp O'Neill was given to say, but even he would be astonished at how local Irish politics has become. Certainly, the only issues in this election are local ones.
On the doorsteps, people pay lip-service to the great debates, nationally and internationally - Iraq, health, the tribunals. But they only really open up when talking about issues in their town, their district, their street. From dog dirt to double yellows, most see no further than down the road.
Take the neat middle-class houses of Sarto Park in Sutton, for example, many of them sporting a "Save our Square" poster in their front windows. At one end of the street, residents are preoccupied with plans for the redevelopment of their local shopping centre.
At the other end of the street, they're more concerned about plans to build 24 social and affordable homes in a field behind their houses.
Wall, a relationship counsellor with Accord, fields a variety of "what have you done for us?" queries. In each answer, she tries to connect with the voter: stressing her local roots; telling a taxi-driver embittered with Fianna Fáil that her husband, too, drives a cab; highlighting her care of a disabled brother to a man concerned about the mentally handicapped.
Here, as in so many places, an undercurrent of fear runs through the concerns listed. People in house after house voice their concerns about "anti-social activities" - a euphemism for gangs of youths, probably neighbours' children, hanging around the area. "We want new shops, and they give us high-rise and underground car parks. We have enough problems with druggies without giving them more opportunities to deal," says one woman.
Planning - local planning - tops the list of concerns among many voters outside the capital. On a balmy day at Kilbeggan races, it's hard to get anyone excited about the elections, in spite of the presence of the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, and party candidates.
But one issue prompts an animated response. "What's the use of the land of Ireland if your son or daughter can't build a house on it?" a woman from Ballymahon, Co Longford, asks me. "Rural housing is the biggest single issue with most of my voters. They just can't get enough of it," says Fine Gael councillor Frank McDermott, from Delvin.
Most people say they don't understand the citizenship referendum. "It gets more confusing by the day. They're changing the goalposts all the time. Even though I think I'm in favour, I'd say they jumped in too quick with it," says Liam Murphy, from Athlone.
Not that candidates go out of their way to raise the issue. "I'd vote for you, only you're calling for a No vote," a passerby tells Labour's Dermot Lacey.
The lack of razzmatazz about this election - Royston Brady excepted - lends to the air of anticlimax. At Kilbeggan, even the European candidates move around quietly, reluctant to disturb the punters.
Labour candidate Peter Cassells spends most of his time shooting the breeze with Mullingar party councillor Johnny Penrose. It's hard to spot the politicians, bereft of rosettes or other identifying marks.
There's little visible antipathy towards most of the candidates, although the PDs and Sinn Féin attract the most flak. The Irish way of dealing with politicians is to be polite to their faces, and less complimentary behind their backs. "Don't open that door if it's a politician!" I heard from inside one large house in Dublin 4; but once the door was opened, a perfectly polite conversation ensued.
At Kilbeggan, Fine Gael even sponsored a race, and European candidate Máiréad McGuinness was invited to address the crowd. However, by the next race, sponsored by Thornton Recycling, normal service was resumed. "People produce it, politicians talk it and Thornton's recycle it," the announcer snickered.