OUTGOING TD and Labour Minister of State Ms Joan Burton hardly even looked at newly elected socialist TD Mr Joe Higgins when the two were placed beside each other to be interviewed on RTE at the end of the Dublin West count.
Mr Higgins was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 because of his support for the Militant Tendency. Ms Burton was one of those who voted in favour of his expulsion. And there they were, he a TD and she having just lost her seat; he having opposed coalitions and she a member of a party that had embraced coalitions.
The stunningly efficient count, the first in the State to be completed, was as dramatic as it was quick. Mr Higgins, a longtime leftwing activist and campaigner against water charges, was the first to be elected, but that did not happen until the sixth count.
He was followed on the seventh count by Mr Brian Lenihan, and we saw how well Fianna Fail's vote management strategy worked when 426 votes from his surplus of 529 went to Mr Liam Lawlor, ensuring that he went ahead of Ms Burton, who then lost the seat. Fine Gael's Mr Austin Currie scraped in without reaching the quota.
Ms Burton paid tribute to Fianna Fail's strategy, even though Mr Lawlor was complaining that there should have been only two Fianna Fail candidates rather than three - hardly a view shared by Mr Lenihan, who got a whacking 1,056 votes from his Fianna Fail running mate, Mr Finbarr Hanrahan, which brought him over the quota and back into Dail Eireann.
Mr Higgins, of course, was the real interest in this constituency. His rhetoric is decidedly old Labour. He will be an ambassador, he said, for the working classes, the PAYE workers, the unemployed and young people. He will not be supporting either Mr Bertie Ahern or Mr John Bruton. Both are the same and both are conservative, he said.
While his supporters sang Ole, Ole, Ole rather than the socialist anthem, the International, the new TD threw a clenched fist ink the air when his victory was announced and addressed his supporters as "comrades" - a title that has probably not been heard within the Labour Party since his expulsion.
Ms Burton has not given up, though. She will, she said, start working to be reelected straight away. After the count in Lucan village, as Mr Higgins went to the pub to celebrate with his supporters, Ms Burton was seen walking towards him. He turned away and did not acknowledge her. It was clear who Mr Higgins sees as the class enemy.