“Is that you Mattie?” Mary Fitzgerald says as she opens the door of her bungalow at Ash Park close to the town centre in Carrick-on-Suir.

"My hands are full of flour so I can't shake your hand, it will have to be a kiss," she tells the Independent TD Mattie McGrath, who is fighting for his political life in the new Tipperary constituency.

“I didn’t answer the door to any of them,” Fitzgerald tells McGrath after outlining some personal issues she would like help with. “That big long fella, Lowry, threw something in the door but I didn’t answer him.”

Asked about her preference for a new government, she sounds unimpressed with the outgoing crowd. "I wouldn't like to see Enda Kenny and them staying in. Micheál Martin will probably replace him though."

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” McGrath interjects.

“I wouldn’t be voting for that Sinn Féin crowd either,” Fitzgerald adds before McGrath takes his leave, striding onwards to his next front door.

Wherever he goes these days, McGrath is accompanied by the soundtrack, blaring from a loudspeaker on one of his canvassing vans, of not one, not two, not three but four campaign songs.

Four songs written and recorded by supporters or family, ranging from Pizzagate, which borrows the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer, to a – possibly sympathetic – number about Joan Burton and her recent canoeing misfortune.

“I love your song,” Sr De Porres O’Sullivan tells him after giving him a hug while out strolling in the early spring sunshine. Which song, she doesn’t say. What about the candidate himself?

“He’s a Christian. I think that’s very important in our country at the moment,” says Sr De Porres, who taught Mattie’s office manager, Geraldine Kelly, some time ago in Carrick.

"When she was in school she was in Ógra Fianna Fáil, " she remembers.

“So was I,” replies McGrath. “That’s where we met, in 1976.”

Bothered

In Ash Park village, populated by retirees, there is much concern among residents about various cutbacks and charges imposed by the outgoing Government.

Honora Morris comes to her door and McGrath lays on the charm. “She’s telling me she’s a pensioner, but I don’t believe it,” he beams.

Morris lived for years in Australia, before returning to her native Carrick in 1982.

She still has two sons out there, so she relies heavily on the phone. “They took the phone allowance off me the minute I turned a certain age,” she says.

"I always was a Labour woman," she adds, before explaining how she has been unimpressed by the Coalition's record.

“I am bothered about who gets in,” she says when asked if she cares about the next government’s formation. “They’ve done nothing in the five years they’ve been there.”

She knows how she’s voting, all the same. “Definitely Mattie.”

Nearby, Frances Power mentions another controversial subject. “I hope you’ll get rid of these water charges,” she urges McGrath, before referring to the fuel allowance, which will be gone in April. “You can’t sit inside during the day in the cold.” And the current Government? “Crap” is her one-word verdict. “I hope everyone has the same thing to say.”

Sun-kissed

Mary Walsh was rehoused, temporarily, in Ash Park village when her home on Carrick’s North Quay was flooded in January. “I went in and out of her house in a boat,” the Independent TD recalls. One of his team, Kieran Bourke, a councillor, says: “Mary courted my father for a while in the early days.”

Much laughter ensues.

In quiet, sun-kissed Castle Park, Pierce Nolan is relaxing in his lounge, reading the paper. "I'll tell you this much," he says, "you'll get my number one, if you do something for me.

“All of the misfortunate people who got medical cards when they were 70, all of them lost them because they were a few pound over the limit. Scandalous.”

Taking a stroll near Ormonde Castle, Sandra Asiemo, Edith Agbonkonkon and Olaide Disu, originally from Nigeria, raise a number of issues.

“As an asylum seeker, [it’s important] for us to be granted our status so we can start working and bring up our kids the way we always wanted,” Asiemo says.

McGrath urges them to call into his office if they ever need help and tells them he’s a traditional Irish dancer.

“I do Nigerian cultural dance. We have a friend from Guinea who does Irish dancing as well,” Asiemo says.

“I must meet her. She might dance with me,” McGrath signs off.