Ahern and former vital have a relaxed day out

THE Fianna Fail leader met the woman who might have been leader when he visited Galway West yesterday.

Bertie Ahern and Maire Geoghegan Quinn exchanged a warm embrace and posed for photographs, the tension generated by the battle for the leadership of 2 1/2 years ago apparently forgotten.

Mrs Geoghegan Quinn was smiling and relaxed, free of the pressures of the inevitable electoral bloodbath that this five seater now is for the first time in over 20 years. She is, remarked a long serving local activist, living proof that there is a life after politics.

Addressing a crowd in Eyre Square, he praised his "good friend" Mrs Geoghegan Quinn and remarked that in "these fine, lovely days we do not need a Rainbow".

He signed autographs, as did the party's spokesman on agriculture, Mr Joe Walsh, present for a meeting with an IFA delegation, who was asked to write his name on a tabloid newspaper by one party supporter. One of the shops visited offered the services of a fortune teller, but Mr Ahern did not avail of them, opting instead to make his own predictions about the immediate future.

Dismissing the Taoiseach's assertion that the momentum was behind the Rainbow, Mr Ahern said be bad been talking at length with the directors of election on Sunday and he was confident that the party's Dail representation would be in the mid70s.

After Galway city, Mr Ahern's cavalcade moved on to Salthill where he mingled with the weekend holidaymakers, before returning to Dublin for a series of strategy meetings.

The day began with an RTE Radio interview with Pat Kenny, in which he took a question on Charles Haughey and the Ben Dunne business. There was a time, in the heat of old battles, when Mr Haughey was told in blunt terms that he should not show his face in Galway West again.

Mr Ahern had no such problem yesterday. To judge from the response, he could have stayed for ever.