Nally in the green as young fans take to trees

Derek Nally believes he's on a roll. "If we had a few more days I think we'd clinch it," he said, beaming at MEP Pat Cox across a table at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. The two men had walked there from St Stephen's Green and said they were approached by people who wanted to shake his hand. "People were coming up to me," Mr Nally said with a pleased look.

He complained earlier that he couldn't get out of his bedroom that morning to have a shave because of the phone calls and requests for interviews. Derek Nally is a happier man than he was last week.

They talk about the "departures" from the Nally camp as if a dark cloud has passed over. A yellow brick road leads to the Aras city and it's a shame, they say, it's not a bit longer as the candidate and his band of friends feel he is just getting into his stride.

In the radio interviews he clambered back on his "honesty, integrity and decency in Irish life" soapbox, questioning whether Charlie Haughey was a "fit person to advise a President."

Boosted by a straw poll in the Farmers' Journal that put him third in the race, he told a school group in St Stephen's Green, "even the farmers made me third and I'm not a farmer at all."

"And it's obvious you like children," said a smitten fan as he was mobbed by the group from St Louis' school, Rathmines, with requests to sign their projects. It was National Tree Day, when almost half a million schoolchildren were taking part in a classroom nature trail.

This group was thrilled with new species - the presidential candidate, surrounded by a pack of cameramen and reporters. Ever the green giant, Derek posed with leaves, acorns, branches and leafthrowing children.

"You tell Dustin if you see him that I'm going to have him in Aras an Uachtarain for lunch on Christmas Day," he said. But the young group was too taken with posing for the cameras to get the joke.

Then a young woman on her break from work, all mascara, blue eye shadow and platform heels, walked up to him smiling widely. "Derek Nally is it?" "It is", he said, charmed to his fingertips. "I'll be voting for you."

A boy who had danced around the group chanting, "Der-ek Nallee, Der-ek Nall-ee" asked the candidate what his job was like. "Well, it all depends which job you're talking about. The job I'll have next month or the job I have this month."

Mr Nally did not plant a tree, which would probably have led to wisecracks about this vital requirement for the Presidency. Mary Robinson's last public engagement was just around the corner in St Stephen's Green when she planted a sapling, the last of many during her Presidency.

"That tree actually died, and we had to plant another one," Margaret Gormley from the Tree Council of Ireland said. "But these things happen," she added as if not to criticise the horticultural talents of the people's favourite President. "Trees just die sometimes for no reason."