Public left pondering as presidential poster boy for enterprise answers with questions

Seán Gallagher clearly has time for people and as he makes his way through the wet city streets, he impresses many but leaves a few exasperated

HERE’S A handy tip for anybody who finds themselves in the path of Seán Gallagher in the coming days and weeks. Never mind thinking up questions to ask him about his ideas for the presidency – make sure you have a load of answers ready to his own endless questions.

A case in point: It’s Saturday afternoon in the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre in Dublin. As Gallagher’s enthusiastic supporters in blue T-shirts press leaflets into passing hands, publican Seán Foley stops to ask the genial candidate a question.

“You seem a man of conviction but you know as well as I do the President has no powers,” says Foley. “What could you actually do?” Gallagher answers this opening question with a question. (For a Cavan man he does a good impression of a Kerry man.)

“Do you think Mary McAleese made a difference culminating in the Queen’s visit,” he asks. “That’s true,” replies Foley. The same way Mary Robinson redefined the role? “Sure,” answers Foley.

Then Gallagher launches into one of his favourite lines: “The presidency is brought to life by the person in the role . . . I was a youth worker, I know all about the disadvantaged” at which point Foley interjects that he himself is one of the “coping classes” before trying again with a question: “How can you make your mark on the Áras?” to which Gallagher replies with another question, “what do you think the country needs?”

“I think the country needs common sense,” says Foley. “Do you think I have that,” asks Gallagher on a roll now. “I do” says Foley. “But how can you bring that common sense to the role?”

“Well, what do you need as a member of the new struggling classes?” counters Gallagher and so it goes on.

Questions, questions. Perhaps it’s difficult for the businessman turned TV star to shift out of interrogatory Dragons’ Den mode. Or maybe this is what Seán Gallagher means when he says he’s been on a “listening tour” of Ireland over the past four months.

He asks questions and listens intently to the answers, sometimes with a comforting hand on the shoulder or the elbow of the person he is listening to. It’s almost Socratic at times, as though he is trying to coax the questioner into answering his own question. Sometimes the approach works, at other times it’s a complete disaster as when on a rainy Grafton Street the candidate meets a man called Tony.

“The country’s gone down the plug,” says straight talker Tony. “What would you do as President to bring us back up again?”

“Tony, what do you think the President should do?” asks Gallagher.

“I am asking you what you would do?” says Tony. “No. Yeah,” says Gallagher. “So is there anything you believe the President should do for the country at this difficult time?”

“I asked you a question and you haven’t answered it,” replies an exasperated Tony. It seems to knock the wind out of Gallagher’s sails momentarily because he sounds a little half-hearted when he delivers another one of his favourite lines, “for me the challenge is that the country has lost its sense of confidence and it’s about getting people back connected to the community”.

Mostly though the canvas is a breeze even under relentless rain which almost threatens to scupper this city-centre walkabout. The presidential poster boy for enterprise, job development and entrepreneurship impresses plenty of soaked passersby with his vehement anti-posters spiel.

People, including a lot of teenage fans of Dragons' Den, go out of their way to tell Gallagher how well he did on the Late Lateor get their photo taken with him.

He shakes hands and offers one of his vote-getting catchphrases “consider yourself canvassed”.

He clearly has time for people, too much time if you ask his handlers who know how quickly an experienced politician can work a shopping centre or a rainy street.

By his side at all times, often holding his hand, is Gallagher’s wife of a year, former cosmetics saleswoman and natural born campaigner Trish O’Connor. “I like your sparkly eye shadow” she says to the daughter of a woman who is collaring her husband.

“I like your hair,” she says to another child of another voter. O’Connor appears to charm everyone she meets. When the couple encounter two older ladies on Grafton Street one of them says to O’Connor “you’d look very well in the Park. Never mind you Seán, but she’d look lovely”.

Asked whether he is surprised by the largely positive reaction on the streets Gallagher says he thinks “people are tired of the old political style, they’re looking for something fresh and new”.

This is backed up by Martha Ford from Galway who says her entire family of eight are voting for him. Why?

“Because he comes from a non-political background and he knows more about what’s going on with people.”

The only time things threaten to turn sour is when Gallagher walks into a sweet shop in the George’s Street Arcade. The man behind the counter is polite but has “no interest” in the presidential campaign or in talking to the candidate. “That’s the first man I ever met in my life who didn’t want to shake my hand,” muses Gallagher afterwards looking almost crestfallen.

But then somebody asks him a question and he answers it with a question and all of a sudden he cheers up again.