Banotti says presidential race is still wide open despite latest polls

Ms Mary Banotti says the race for the Presidency is still "wide open" in spite of opinion polls which have shown the Fianna Fail/PD candidate, Prof Mary McAleese, in a clear lead.

The Fine Gael candidate is pinning her hopes for a last-minute turn-around on winning over the 13 per cent of undecided voters in this weekend's Irish Times/MRBI poll.

The Banotti campaign is also hoping the slightly greater rate of increase in her support will help narrow the gap between the two front-runners by polling day on Thursday.

Recognising that the past week's controversy over Prof McAleese's alleged links to Sinn Fein had only served to harden the Fianna Fail candidate's support, Ms Banotti sought yesterday to bury the issue for the remainder of the election campaign.

Speaking in Co Wicklow, she said the McAleese controversy had merely served to get in the way of the "deeper messages" from the other four candidates. "The effect of this has been to disguise our real differences."

Ms Banotti travels to Galway and Castlebar, Co Mayo, today in a late effort to increase her support in the west. Opinion polls have shown that Prof McAleese is out-polling Ms Banotti by a margin of three to one in Connaught/Ulster.

With Prof McAleese's Catholic nationalist background clearly in mind, Ms Banotti yesterday stressed her liberal, pluralist credentials. Ireland's prosperity and sense of self-worth was not just rooted in economic well-being, she said. It was also about "the freedom of spirit which makes us tolerant rather than divisive".

"It allows us to accept and enjoy the diversity of cultural, religious and other differences. This is the new Ireland and I am determined that the Presidency continues to breath life into it.

"We must not roll back to the past. We must not allow one controversy to blind us to what we are actually doing for the next seven years."

As part of a canvass through the south-east, Ms Banotti yesterday visited her old boarding school, the Dominican convent in Wicklow town. Speaking to a classroom full of former pupils, supporters and retired nuns, she recalled her school days. "No one ever asked if you enjoyed school. You were just expected to pass your exams and do your best.

"I was the wild one, whereas my sister, Nora [Owen], was always the head girl. In fact, she's still basically the head girl."

However, one of the retired nuns from the convent, Sister Eucaria - "I know, I know, everyone says it sounds like a brand of toothpaste" - said Mary was "a lovely girl and very good at her work".

The family link with the convent goes back to 1923, recalled Ms Banotti, when her mother arrived as a "frightened, sad little girl in a black frock" after the family home in Cork had been burned by the Black and Tans. Ms Banotti's mother and aunts and four of her sisters boarded at the school.

Some 40 years on, school memories were a little ropey. The garden was the same but the hockey pitch had moved. "I remember a dark, handsome gardener in the school - he was about the only man we saw in five years here."

But this was, as the candidate said, a "whistle-stop tour" and the Banotti campaign was soon on the road again. So far, she has clocked 8,000 miles in this election.

In Bray, Ms Banotti was welcomed by a crowd of good-humoured supporters in the Royal Hotel. But for every election groupie in the bar, there was an Arsenal or Aston Villa fan so speech-making had to give way to the big-screen football.

Plans for a canvass on the high street were also abandoned. The first day of winter time and it was cold.