IF there's one thing that rubs Brian Cowen up the wrong way it is political theorising, mumbo jumbo about "the centre right or centre left".
The Scud missile of Fianna Fail smirks at the absurdity. "Centreright or centre left! This is the Pat Magner (Labour Senator and strategist) school of politics," he declares.
The Laois/Offaly TD lowers his voice in mock gravity. "The option for the people is centre right or centre left", he intones, capturing Mr Magner's Cork cadence.
Reverting to his normal midlands tone, he declares that "people in this country don't have to listen to that sort of nonsense".
"Workers want to know what did they do for me when they had the chance to improve my pay packet, and the answer is nil. Call that centre left or call it what you like, that is realpolitik."
Political theories, dogmas, doctrines or, worst of all, political correctness, mean nothing to the people of Laois/Offaly, "or anybody anywhere else either", he insists.
"That is what I call coffee table, politics, where you sit down on a Saturday afternoon with a few, other pseudo intelligentsia and tell us all how the country should be run and why we should be so grateful that they are musing about our futures and planning the way ahead. There is a political constituency in this country that has convinced itself that is where it is all at ... People who are involved in the navel gazing business."
That is not Brian Cowen's brand of politics. His comes without frills and consists of representing the interests of "ordinary people", providing decent jobs, housing, social services. People, after all, simply want the opportunity to make a living for themselves is how he sees it.
"They are not looking for the nanny state, like Mr Hoxha of Albania coming along to tell you to sweep the roads this week and not sweep them next week. People want to be able to take opportunities as they present themselves and the government's job is to allow those opportunities to flourish," he says.
Given his shark like approach to the profession to which he has belonged for 13 years, Brian Cowen could be in politics for aeons. Every time Fianna Fail needs a body to do battle, it calls on Mr Cowen. His reputation as the paratrooper who takes no prisoners is fortified in every Dail altercation that comes his way.
Born in Clara, Co Offaly, in 1960, he is one of three boys and the son of the late Bernard (Ber) Cowen TD. His background was comfortable rather than privileged.
"One is grateful for the sacrifices that were made. I grew up in Clara. There was no such thing as twopence looking down on two pence ha'penny. There was no reason to be elitist; everyone went "to the same school, the Franciscans, the school of hard knocks where we played football and hurling..."
HIS uncle, Father Andrew, was a Franciscan priest at Mount St Joseph Abbey in Roscrea, and, after a year at vocational school, it was "the natural thing to do" to go to boarding school there.
"I enjoyed it there and it gave me the opportunity to meet guys from other backgrounds and you suddenly realised that Clara is not the centre of the world," he says.
They tried, at Mount St Joseph, to turn him into a rugby player - with limited success - but his academic ability was never in doubt. He left Roscrea in 1977 and studied law at UCD "on the basis that there were eight hours lectures a week in the first year".
"It seemed eminently suitable for me. It gave me time to learn about college life. I liked law . . . I found it did not over exercise my time," he recalls.
He attended the Incorporated Law Society and, after an apprenticeship as a solicitor, established his own practice with another solicitor, Tom O'Donovan, in March 1984 two months after his father's death. By June he was a Dail Deputy and the rest, he says, "is history".
Now 37, he has twice been a Cabinet Minister in Labour and then Transport, Energy and Communications - and will certainly take a prominent portfolio in Cabinet if Fianna Fail is lucky enough to get into power. The recent mini front bench reshuffle, brought about by the resignation of Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, catapulted him into the health brief as the hepatitis C scandal was still in full flight.
He has spent most of his time since talking to former health ministers, reading himself into the complexities of the blood contamination controversy and meeting women's "rage and outrage that the State had not only failed them but belittled them".
"The more one read into hepatitis C, the more appalled one became that these things were allowed to happen. Errors were compounded by the failure to be frank. There was a systems failure of monumental proportions," he says.
Brian Cowen, in his own words, "got stuck into" Michael Noonan and his predecessor in Health, Brendan Howlin, during the recent Dail debate on hepatitis C, in the wake of the report of the Finlay Tribunal of Inquiry.
"I set it out in very great detail and I stand over every word of it. ,The attempt to claim (political) exoneration and the spin doctoring and news management failed. There was a cynical attempt to gloss over real accountability."
There will be fresh efforts, when the Dail resumes this week after the Easter recess, to raise again the admission on radio by Mr Howlin that the Government was involved in how the legal strategy in the McCole case was pursued. He will seek from Mr Howlin the aide memoires to Cabinet which, he claims, would throw further light on the Government's handling of the affair.
If nominated to the Department of Health in a new government, Mr Cowen says that he would establish the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal on a statutory basis immediately, which would allow the body to award the same damages as the High Court is entitled to give.
He promise's immediate action, too, on the tribunal to deal with the hepatitis C infection of haemophiliacs and the HIV contamination of blood and blood products.
Meanwhile, there are other areas in the vast terrain of health that require urgent attention, particularly hospital waiting lists, which have, Mr Cowen says, increased by a third in the last year. Fianna Fail must focus on this again and reschedule finances so that money is provided to hospitals earlier in the year to allow proper planning.
"There are also huge demands on casualty departments in our hospitals. We must try to utilise our GP services to a much greater extent for minor complaints so that we do not clog them up," he adds.
Care of the elderly is another area in need of revisiting and he has statistics on hand to demonstrate the expanding nature of the needs.
"The number of people over 65 is expected to grow by more than 40 per cent in the next 20 years. The number of people over 85 years old will grow by 60 per cent in the same period. With people living longer, resources must, be put in place for residential care and improved community care and nursing homes."
The economic impact of a population that is living longer will continue to escalate and, according to Mr Cowen, must be dealt with through careful planning. Precisely how much Fianna Fail, will devote to this and areas such as waiting lists and mental health services will not be unveiled until after the general election has been called.
"Over 20 per cent of government expenditure is on health. Because of improved economic resources, expenditure has increased, but we are in the mid league in terms" of spending in the European Union. We have relatively high dependency ratios in our population, so there are huge demands on our health services, he adds.
An advocate of partnership between the public and private sectors across a range of areas, he suggests this alliance could be used to good effect in the provision of residential care services.
"We will also have a White Paper on health insurance. The Government has failed to give a direction to the VHI as to how it will maintain the health packages that people want. We will set up a VHI users group to give the con a greater imput."
Though a general election seems just round the corner, Brian Cowen rigidly refuses to discuss coalition options. But one gets a distinct feeling that Fianna Fail's in your face street fighter is not in love with the Labour Party.
Coalitions, he judges, are hybrids that result from indecisive results. People might just be interested in an unambiguous result this time - a Fianna Fail majority.
"With a few more percentage points we face the prospect of "doing better than the pundits believe. My argument remains - if you want stable government, the best chance is a single party government. People have to make a choice about who has the political capacity to deliver policies well pinto the 21st century . . . If I were to engage in speculation after that, I would be suggesting that Fianna Fail does not have the capacity to win this election."
This is the first time in years that Fianna Fail is fighting an election from the opposition benches and, according to Brian Cowen, it has had more time to focus and concentrate on the fray.
"When you bring it down to brass tacks, money does not win elections. It is down to presentation of policies, getting the message across and keeping that message simple," he says.
As satisfaction ratings with the Government continue to rise - now at 53 per cent - the prospect of the three coalition parties returning to power is very real. Unemployment is falling and the economy is, for some at least, in boomtime.
"People are not fools. They know that the work done by Fianna Fail since 1987 laid the foundations for a low interest low inflation economy," he says.
TEN years ago, tax rates ran at 65 per cent, 52 per cent and 35 per cent. These have been reduced to 48 per cent and 26 per cent. According to Brian Cowen, all the present Government can boast from that achievement was a paltry one percentage point cut from the lower tax band which Ruairi Quinn announced in the January Budget.
"One per cent is all the Labour Party or DL or Fine Gael did for workers at a time of unprecedented economic growth. We take full credit for all that tax change, together with the widening of the bands - in some cases by 75 per cent. Those are the facts," he declares.
By not adhering to its own targets, the Government had deprived taxpayers of a package worth £750 million which was potentially available. People would not forget that one could not claim to be pro worker but deny taxpayers the fruits of economic proficiency.
"It amuses me," he says in an unamused voice, "that what is really political posturing is dressed up as substance by this Government."
So what would Fianna Fail, in power, do for the hard pressed taxpayer?
Brian Cowen refuses to divulge "details until the election is called, but he does promise that the taxpayer will be better off.
Fianna Fail now involves "a new generation" who are preparing for Government and the next century, he says. They do not lack new ideas, but at every juncture there is a "pretty tiresome attempt to stereotype the party". This image would have pulled "guffaws" 30 years ago and has no relevance to the Fianna Fail party of the 90s".
"We are not sold on the ideology of the centre right or the centre left. But this idea that Fianna Fail is not policy driven, that we are careerists who have no reason for our existence other than to be there (in power), is nonsense," he insists.
In fact, he claims, the Government is culling its ideas from Fianna Fail proposals, most starkly in the areas of law and order and criminal justice.
"The basic, core philosophy of the party is to provide equality of opportunity if not equality of outcome. You cannot guarantee equality of outcome, but you should be able to guarantee equality of opportunity. Everyone should have the prospect of reaching their potential. That is what modern republicanism is about," he says.
GIVEN the rate of social change, the task of government will become increasingly challenging and must be based on a sense of community and solidarity. The urbanisation of Irish society has brought opportunity to some but led to the social exclusion of many others, he says.
Policies designed to integrated the excluded into the mainstream have so far largely failed. Some of the origins of the problems are profound and Fianna Fail has "thought deeply" about how the resources of the State can be channelled into addressing them.
As a means of improving the State's response, his party has come up with "an integrated programme" on health, education, employment and the criminal justice system. Nobody will say, at the end of five years (under Fianna Fail), that everything is rosy in the garden. "But we do shave to be able to say we will make a major impact and we do have a leader who is probably more aufait with what needs to be done than any commentator or anyone else".
The areas of criminal law and order, drug rehabilitation and jobs are a "top priority" for the people and must be responded to. The public are entitled to feel safe in their own homes. His party's recent commitment to put £380 million into anti crime and anti drugs programmes simply has to go ahead because the social cost "will be 10 times greater" if it does not.
Brian Cowen is a conservative "with a small c"; he is "not a secularist", but believes in a tolerant, pluralist Ireland. This country has emerged from "an era of institutionalisation" - that led to many of the problems such as child abuse - into a more open society. The problems highlighted in the recent past should not, however, lead us to "throw the baby out with the bath water".
"Let's not decry everything. Let us isolate that which was not right or proper. Let's acknowledge it and not hide it and ensure it never happens again. But, in doing all that, let us not suggest to ourselves that everything that was part of those institutions - our schools' and hospitals run by the religious and beaten down," he says.
Social attitudes nave changed but people sense that social controls have gone as well. "There is a feeling that we don't know what we are building instead. We have to apply our minds to keeping what is best and grafting on what is appropriate," he says.
Stressing the need for an educational system that will enhance the concept of personal responsibility, his idea of a good education is one that produces people "who can think for themselves".
Another wish of his is to see a united Ireland. Unity by consent is a legitimate objective, "a very noble objective". He hopes to see it in his lifetime, but it will only be on the basis of consent. The dynamics introduced by the peace process "proves there are no limits to the horizons of 21st century Ireland".
"At the end of the day, my position is that constitutional republicanism will be an accommodating tradition in this country. Is modern unionism prepared to move from the exclusivist dogma to become an accommodating tradition?" he asks.
A "New Ireland" can be built on the twin pillars of self determination and consent. He blames the British government for its "failure of political will" and says the IRA campaign has done more to create division than bring about unity "as they would claim".
Since his political horizons obviously extend far beyond the Department of Health - if that is his next resting place - does his mind ever turn towards the possibility of becoming leader of his job in the future as one person can be expected on his or her own to be a repository for solutions to every problem. Having served under three leaders, "the one thing you have to admire is the level of commitment" needed to head the party and organisation.