AWAY from the jeeps, the mushrooming apartment blocks and private housing estates, there is another side to the economic boom in Waterford.
It is the territory of Poundstretcher and Crazy Prices, welfare cheques and cut price bulk packs of chicken pieces, and it is claimed as his own by a small, energetic man in a grey suit.
Martin O'Regan, the Workers' Party candidate, canvasses in the hyperactive style of someone who knows he has a fighting chance of claiming the last seat in the four seat constituency.
The 45 year old unemployed father of six is trading on his long personal record as a local community activist, as much as on the somewhat eroded political power base built up by the pre-split WP.
Left wing support in the constituency is divided at least three ways and contested between Labour, the WP and the Socialist Workers' Party.
Democratic Left has not fielded a candidate this time, and the WP believes it can capture an enhanced share of the working class vote.
In the 1992 election he demonstrated that the core WP vote remained intact, by polling 3,000 first preferences against 1,039 for DL's Paddy Gallagher.
Opponents assert that this represents just about the limit of his electoral support base, but they are worried.
The WP candidate has a high profile, as a Waterford public representative since 1985 and as a prominent campaigner in the bitter local struggle against service charges.
Canvassing in the Lisduggan shopping centre, which serves an area of high unemployment, his local standing was evident.
Taxi men, shoppers and waitresses did not have to be introduced to the man whose record endorses his personal maxim: "If people have got to do something, I'll go and do it with them."
He shook hands with wheelchair bound John Lynch, remarking: "This man, with six women, blocked the van that was going to cut off the water in 1989."
Memories of shared street action don't fade easily.
"Are you giving out rough again?" called a passing housewife, as the candidate intercepted shoppers.
O'Regan's thorny challenges to local vested interests feature regularly on local radio.
He began his community involvement as chairman of the Ballybeg Residents' Association and was a founder member and first chairman of the Combined Tenants' and Residents' Association.
He was also founder member and chairman of the first Anti Service Charges Group and has campaigned on behalf of TV deflector groups and striking workers.
The WP nationally would say Waterford is a prime target for a Dail seat, he says.
The aim is to recover the seat won for the old WP by Paddy Gallagher in 1982: "As we see it, we re going to pick up a large part of a Labour vote that's sliding down."
"The core WP vote will hold, with the work which Martin has done," asserts his director of elections, John Halligan.
The party began its campaign early and covered a wider area than previously. It now hopes to get a "respectable" vote in outlying towns such as Tramore and Dungarvan.
"At the end of the day, we're going to be fighting Fianna Fail and Katharine Bulbulia [PD] for the last seat," claims O'Regan, who is national vicepresident of the WP.
He topped the poll at the local council elections in 1985, and serves on all the corporation committees.
With unemployment in the city standing at around 8,500 and almost 850 on the waiting list for housing, O'Regan identifies a large pool of support for his radical efforts to highlight poverty and social exclusion.
His main problem is to bring them out on polling day.