GERRY ADAMS was campaigning in some of the most deprived areas of Dublin earlier this week. On Monday evening he spoke to an anti drugs meeting in Darndale, on a square of scrubby grass outside the local community centre. Although there had been very little advance publicity, a crowd of several hundred turned up to hear the Sinn Fein leader.
Afterwards, walking around the bleak, litter strewn estate, Mr Adams was mobbed like a rock star. Women begged him to stop so they could have their photograph taken with him, tough looking youths pushed forward to get a look, children gave him scraps of paper to be autographed. Nobody asked whether a vote for Sinn Fein was a vote for violence or a vote for peace.
I asked a leading activist in the local anti drugs campaign, not a member of Sinn Fein, what people would make of Mr Adams's visit. "Listen," he said, "nobody ever comes up here. These people feel completely abandoned by politicians. They've seen this guy on television, talking about the peace process, shaking hands with Clinton. It's a huge boost for them."
The meeting got no coverage, of course. The received political wisdom is that Sinn Fein will be lucky to win even one seat in this election and, besides, the only information journalists want from Gerry Adams is when the IRA is going to call a ceasefire.
At a press conference to introduce Sinn Fein's manifesto all the questions, including my own, related to the peace process and how the various disagreements between the parties might or might not affect it. At the end Martina Kenna, the party's candidate in Dublin South Central, rounded on us furiously. Why were all the questions about the North? Yes, it was important, but the problems facing her constituency were related to drugs, unemployment, lack of childcare facilities, resources for education.
She was right to be angry, and even Gerry Adams looked somewhat shamefaced. He had spent most of the day canvassing in innercity areas of Dublin and seemed genuinely horrified by the conditions of grim poverty which he had seen; much worse I would think than in his own constituency of West Belfast.
There are other problems in the republican ghettos of Belfast and Derry, a deep sense of political alienation that will only fade when peace and an equitable settlement are achieved. But in terms of economic resources, huge efforts have been made to improve the living conditions and the self esteem of the people who live in them. This hasn't been done for reasons of altruism. The British government has poured billions of pounds into areas like Andersonstown and the Creggan in Derry in an effort to pacify the nationalist community and keep its young people from joining the IRA.
More recently additional funds, aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation, have come from the coffers of Europe and the United States. The results are to be seen in the enviably good schools, recreational and cultural facilities, thriving community projects, women's centres. All these have helped to build a sense of confidence and political energy in these communities.
In the past the government of this State has not had the same desperate incentives to pour scarce economic resources into the deprived and marginalised ghettos of our inner cities. But it must be a cause for concern that, just at the time when the economy is booming as never before, the grinding poverty which stunts so many of our people's lives has hardly figured in the election debate.
TONY BLAIR and the glamour of his success in Britain have quite a lot to answer for in the Irish context. New Labour's concentration on the centre ground of politics has been cited as the reason that all the major parties have focused almost exclusively on the concerns of the better off, while ignoring those who live at the margins of society.
Even Mary Harney has been able to claim that the PDs' policies on tax and social welfare are inspired by Tony Blair. It has also meant that the parties which traditionally defend the interests of the poor, Labour and Democratic Left, are now widely seen as preferring to argue the minutiae of tax cuts to making the case for redressing the gross inequalities of our society.
It has become even more noticeable in recent stages of the campaign that when the issue of poverty is raised in any serious way, the interests of the have nots are articulated by representatives of the Catholic Church rather than by politicians.
There are TDs and candidates in this election who speak with great passion for the poor. But usually they are independents or members of small left wing groups, rather than representatives of the major parties, and are thus seen as wielding relatively little clout. When RTE's Prime Time programme decided to mount a debate on a strategy for tackling poverty, it was to the Conference of Religious in Ireland and Father Sean Healy that the producers turned to add weight and credibility to the case for radical change.
CORI, more than any of the major political parties, has tried to focus our attention as voters on those of our fellow citizens, over 30 per cent, who have to live on an income which is substantially lower than the national average wage, and on the IS per cent of Irish people who live in persistent and grinding poverty. Father Healy has also warned that this is not simply a moral issue, but an explosive social problem which we ignore at our peril.
If present trends continue and the success of our economy works to increase the economic divisions between the haves and havenots, then we are creating a recipe for social and political instability. If people who live in areas like Summerhill and Killinarden feel they and their problems are of so little concern to the mainstream parties, they will look to other political groups to represent them.
Watching Gerry Adams's progress last Monday, it seemed extremely foolish to dismiss Sinn Fein's appeal as being exclusively Northern and irrelevant to conditions in this State. There are dramatic differences from the situation in the North, but there are also startling similarities in terms of political and social alienation in deprived areas.
It seems that few people, even within Sinn Fein, expect the party to do well in this election, though it would also be premature to write off the party's chances. But one young man said to me: "We've a lot to learn about building a political machine, skills which Fianna Fail has taken for granted for years. But we will do it, and when we do we'll take the young, those who don't bother to vote at all."
He was describing exactly what Sinn Fein has done in the North. Whether it can repeat its success down here will depend on how energetically the next government tackles the problems of in equality and deprivation in areas like Darndale.