Hope floats on streets of Cork as valiant Dana keeps best side out

The affection for the former Eurovision star was clear to see as well-wishers crowded around

WHAT IS it that impels certain individuals to continue battling when all appears lost? Pride? Denial? Bull-headedness? Expenses retrieval?

Whatever it is, there is something compelling in the spectacle of a candidate whose polling figures have her deep in the margin of error, whose vicious family dispute is common gossip, whose tyre blowout is the object of satire and who still manages to haul herself out of bed of a wet morning, slap on the make-up, pull on the six-inch heels and sally forth to grip and grin all over again.

What happens behind the scenes is another matter.

On Saturday, Dana’s first duty is to answer yet another RTÉ debate summons (Charlie Bird’s this time, recording from 10am). The plan then is to canvass Cahir, Co Tipperary, at 1.30pm and Mitchelstown at 2.30pm.

Repeated attempts to contact her mobile plus an e-mail to her publicist to firm up the itinerary yield only announcements that the mobile’s mailbox is full. At about 12.45pm, she rings to say apologetically that the debate over-ran and she’s still in traffic in the Dublin suburbs.

At 1.40pm she rings again to say that they’ve decided to head straight for Cork city. Her husband Damien is at the wheel.

It’s about 3.50pm by the time they hit Patrick Street, in the same liveried Hertz hire car whose tyre gave such grief earlier in the week. She hasn’t had lunch and she badly needs to “freshen up” (to use foreign affairs lingo) before the walkabout.

But that won’t happen anytime soon because we’re in prime promenading territory and she is immediately swamped.

Well-wishers crowd around to applaud her courage/values/ Eurovision win/protection of the Constitution, interspersed with the odd earnest adolescent, shiny-eyed groups of girls and semi-impressed lads who know a bit about the candidates from class, supplemented by wave after wave of sniggering teenagers who demand a picture then mug at the camera from behind her.

She has a gentle word for everyone, sometimes stroking their hair or giving a little back-rub. She baulks at none of them, not even at a 16-year-old dressed as a bishop to promote a Halloween shop.

Her local support team numbers between five and 10 people, most aged 50-something. An American in a beanie with a pile of leaflets declares he’s “illegal” since his mother had a stroke and is further explaining that he’s a convert to Orthodox Catholicism and that no one has the right to kill a child.

Another canvasser tries to haul him away, saying he’s not “representative”.

Another, Patrick Manning, says he’s there because “Dana speaks the truth, she protects the unborn”. A woman who declines to give her name says she supports her because she’s against homosexuality and abortion – “she doesn’t want children to be hurt and go down the slippery slope”.

A man is extremely agitated about any children’s rights referendum, claiming it will lead to the abuse of children while whispering obvious slanders about a prominent campaigner.

Another supporter, Jimmy Clair – author of a 468-page book which presents “evidence indicating that the world is on the brink of a great catastrophe” – speaks passionately about Our Lady’s efforts to warn Rwandans, Bosnians and Egyptians among others about impending disaster.

Harry Rea says Dana is “the only one answering the questions based on the faith she lives and her own moral understanding”. He also declares that it’s illegal under article 46 to have more than one referendum in one day. Has anyone checked?

Meanwhile, Dana is giving and getting the love of Cork. Damien hovers solicitously, draping her Escada coat around her shoulders and trying to move the show along the street.

“This is what she loves,” he says with a wry smile.

One woman, glowing in the wake of an exchange, says she “just wanted to shake her hand because she stands for a lot. I think she was brave about her citizenship and she protects the Constitution.”

A Derry man walks up to her, declaring “I’ve waited 40 years for this,” harking back to the glorious Eurovision days. Two well- impressed, serious 15-year-olds say they would definitely vote for her – if they only had a vote.

Why? Pointing to a canvasser, they explain that he told them that Dana would oppose a law saying that no one can search your house without a warrant unless you’ve done something wrong. “And that’s good – isn’t it?”

A council street cleaner runs up to say that he had Mass said for her only this morning. It cost him €7 but he just wanted to do something, he says.

Afterwards, we go for a coffee. She has a bowl of soup – the first food she’s had since early morning. She says it’s been “a hard, hard campaign and very frustrating. Journalists I’ve known for years are saying they wouldn’t like the kind of journalism that’s going on, the kind of things that are being written up for headlines.

“Maybe it’s a reflection of how a lot of work has gone. There isn’t the steady job. You’re as good as your last headline.”

It’s also been harder at debates, she says, because there have been seven of them.

“It’s hard when they have to time every second you speak. So we’re told going into it to try not to talk over each other but at the same time, ‘make it as lively a debate as you can’.” It’s confusing right enough.

Any regrets about that startling statement during an RTÉ debate about forthcoming stories? She refers to them repeatedly as “unsubstantiated allegations” and says she was “advised” to make that statement. “But I did what I felt was right and I try not to spend too much time looking back.”

She cried for the first time in the whole campaign, she says, when three Castlebar women put their arms around her and told her to take no notice and to “just keep going”.

As for the tyre blowout, she says they were only delighted to hear that the Garda were saying “it was caused by a natural thing”. Damien nods in agreement – “that’s another level of campaigning that no one would ever want to go to”.

Then a couple of hours later, en route to their Claregalway home, she rings again with the latest news about the tyre.

Now the Garda are saying that there is no definitive report on the cause and they’ve decided to send it to Michelin for investigation. “There were 18 perforations and the gardaí . . . They just don’t know what caused the tyre to do what it did.”