On the green in front of Marian Terrace, across the road from Slane Castle, Sylvia Wogan is busy planting flowers from a wheelbarrow.
She briefly mistakes the approaching Irish Times reporter and photographer as “judges from the Tidy Towns”, a competition in which this small, well-kept estate always scores highly. But told that she is in the middle of an election canvass, undaunted, she returns to her barrowful of blooms.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín and his local election candidate Peter Whelan pull in shortly afterwards on a not dissimilar mission. Tóbín is standing in the Midlands-North-West European constituency, but also hoping to plant Whelan – one of 66 candidates the still-new party is running in the locals – on Meath County Council.
They arrive to a friendly welcome from the gardener and her neighbour, Lily Maguire, who has been talking about her love of cats.
“Pets are important,” Tóibín agrees. “I lost a lovely dog recently. The whole family buried him in the back garden. There were a lot of tears.”
Pleasantries over, the election candidates go to work on the doors, where the subject matter quickly turns to sewerage. Behind its pristine facade, it emerges, the terrace had a bad problem a while ago with pipes backing up.
“There was s**t everywhere,” Whelan agrees with a man who raises the subject; “I saw it myself.”
So in keeping with his self-appointed role as a community activist, he sought householders’ permission to represent them with the local authorities.
“I believe that if you want to become a councillor, you have to act like a councillor,” he explains as Tóibín nods approvingly. And to the obvious gratitude of the man on the doorstep, the pipes problem was soon fixed.
Not for the first time on the night, this leads to a role inversion between the candidates. As an established TD and effective media performer, Navan-man Tóibín is well-known on the doorsteps. But the local activism of Whelan – a free-range-pig farmer who runs a business called The Whole Hoggs – has made a deep impression too, so the relationship is symbiotic.
“He’s a good friend,” the sewage-issue man tells Tóibín, implicitly promising this may turn into a European election vote.
The nearby Hill of Slane is famous as the place where St Patrick lit the paschal fire, sending a visual message to the royal court at Tara, some 20km south. By his successful opposition to the referendums earlier this year, Tóibín believes he lit a fire under the Government, although he doesn’t say so in as many words.
He thinks it was a “watershed” moment in the electorate’s relationship with its “out of touch” rulers. But his preferred metaphor for what he and his party is doing is the workmanlike verb “crowbar”.
Asked on some doorsteps why he’s running for Europe, he stresses that he will still be standing in the next general election, regardless. “I see the Euro elections as a way to crowbar the issues that concern us on to the agenda of a Government that isn’t listening.”
Immigration aside, the issues in Slane are relentlessly local. One person complains about a lack of policing: “There’s a brand new Garda car above in the barracks and it hasn’t moved in six weeks.”
For another woman, the big issue is the failure of buses to stop along the road as they once did, requiring her to trek to the village.
Whelan suggests the problem may be that many bus drivers now are “foreign nationals” who don’t know the passengers personally and are “not used to our ways”, but he promises to put a word in.
The question of the “failing asylum system”, as Aontú's campaign leaflet calls it, is brought up only once, and by a woman who doesn’t consider it a major issue. There are children “coming here from warzones”, she tells Tóibín. “They should be looked after.” He agrees, but insists Ireland needs a better way of sorting genuine refugees from those who are not.
Meanwhile, as it did in actuality, sewage continues to come up.
“I know,” Whelan agrees with another man who recalls the problem. “I saw the s**t myself.”
Not everyone is promising Aontú a first preference. Despite a warm reception – “we know you’re very strong against abortion, so we’ll definitely give you a vote” – a couple at another door are traditional Fianna Fáilers, clearly, and reluctant to switch despite going on to complain about the longer-established party.
“You’re giving out about them but you still vote for them?” Whelan asks, reasonably enough. “Meanwhile who’s the man who comes out and does the work?”
Whelan himself is a former Fianna Fáil supporter who became disillusioned “when they got into bed with Fine Gael – I thought they’d lost their way”. He joined Aontú in admiration at Tóibín’s resignation from Sinn Féin in 2018 over abortion. “I thought this is a man of principle.”
But he didn’t expect other “traditional voters”, such as the complaining Fianna Fáil couple, to change minds so easily. “Still,” Tóibín congratulated him afterwards, “you did well to point out the dissonance in their thinking”.
It was nearing 9pm, the close of the night-time canvassing window in these parts. On weekdays, knocking on doors is confined to between about 7pm – “any earlier than that, people are still in the commute” – and the time when those with children to put to bed will not thank you for visiting.
There are few children in this estate. Even so, the campaigners are ready to call it a night. “Have you enough?” Tóibín asks The Irish Times. And only when told we’re in no hurry do they decide to try a couple more doors on a different road.
The suspicion that they had handpicked the first terrace for a conspicuously friendly reception is somewhat allayed when the last-but-one doorbell of the night is answered by a man who could be an Aontú poster boy: a former Sinn Féin supporter now going through a crisis of faith.
“I don’t agree with you on everything,” he tells Tóibín, “but you’re the most impressive politician I’ve seen recently”. As for SF, he adds, with an anguished expression: “I’m starting to have doubts. I’m wondering if they’re just Fianna Fáil-lite.”
Tóibín suggests Mary Lou McDonald has been “flip-flopping on many issues”. The man at the door agrees. The subject then turns briefly to another Euro candidate, ex-jockey Nina Carberry of Fine Gael.
“It’s all celebrity,” the man complains, adding: “I’ve never voted Fine Gael in my life and I never will.”
He used to think Sinn Féin would bring change. “Or at least they’d try something different,” he says. Then he adds, with a sigh: “Now I’m worried it’ll just be the same oul’ s***e all over again.”
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