Michael O'Gorman, owner of Hairy's Cabs, Thurles, Co Tipperary, comes straight to the point when asked his views on the embattled Independent TD, Michael Lowry, in the wake of the McCracken tribunal report.

"He hasn't raped or murdered anyone and if I thought I could get away with what he did then I would have done it too."

It is a view echoed all over the constituency, where despite the tribunal's damning findings, Mr Lowry remains the archetypal golden boy.

Mr O'Gorman, whose business cards declare that his vehicles arrive "faster than a boiling kettle", has known Mr Lowry for 20 years. Like many in the Tipperary North constituency he considers him "a good friend".

Mr Lowry has done "certain things" for him, he says, and is a very "genuine person".

He acknowledges with a certain amount of satisfaction that it is difficult to explain to "outsiders" the support that Michael Lowry continues to enjoy in the area.

The surprise of these outsiders when Mr Lowry topped the poll at the last election amused him.

Judge McCracken's findings, including the statement that Mr Lowry had been "consistently benefiting from the black economy from shortly after he was first elected to the Dail" have, he says, had no effect on the high esteem in which the TD is held.

The cab driver sums up the feelings of most of Mr Lowry's supporters: "If you walk into a pub, he will talk to you and shake your hand. He will help secure finances for certain things. He will help you if you are buying land or setting up your own business. Whatever it is, you can go to Michael, he will be there and if he can he will sort it out," he says.

Barely a mile from Mr Lowry's contentious Holycross home, it is a quiet night in the Abbey Tavern. The barman jokes that since controversy became Michael Lowry's constant companion there have been more visitors stopping by to ask for Mr Lowry's house "than are taking a drink in here".

Such attention is frowned upon by the locals. A helicopter landed at the back of Seamus Barrett's home once; its occupants were looking for "the Lowry house". Seamus, a Lowry-supporting Fianna Fail man, was "having none of it".

"I told them "go away down the field there please, you are at the wrong station".

There is laughter at this often repeated anecdote but John Maher of Holycross adopts a deadly serious tone when discussing the man he says the people of North Tipperary will "not let resign". "I couldn't explain it to you, all the work he has put into the area, he is a god in Tipperary North," he says

All the work cited by Mr Maher is indeed impressive. Morale was at an all-time low in the community with the closure of the sugar factory when Mr Lowry came on the scene.

His first morale-boosting operation was clearing Semple Stadium and Thurles GAA of its crippling £1 million debt by organising the Trip to Tipp rock concerts.

Three years ago, Mr Lowry secured funding for a study of a proposed third-level educational institution in Thurles which local people had begun to despair would never get off the ground. Work on the Tipperary Rural and Business Development Institute begins early next year.

Then there is the lead and zinc mines at Lisheen in Moyne, near Thurles. As the then Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Lowry was responsible for a multi-million pound project which will employ around 700 people when construction begins there in October.

This is all apart from the personal advice and help doled out by Mr Lowry from his by now legendary constituency clinics. Almost everyone you meet in Thurles has received some kind of "favour" from Mr Lowry. But, according to John Maher, they are things to which you are entitled, Mr Lowry being "an absolute master at cutting through red tape".

"He should be given a chance to fix things," says a man whom Mr Lowry helped when he needed a bank loan to build his house. "All he did was what any man in the country would love to do. I would clap any man on the back who could do it and get away with it," he says.

He is not the only one who feels that Michael Lowry's only crime was getting caught. The fact that he held a senior ministerial position while engaging in what Judge McCracken this week called cynical tax evasion is incidental to his supporters.

But there are also those who are "disgusted" by what Mr Lowry has done. People who hold this view are reluctant to put their names to their negative appraisals of the former minister.

"I have to live here," explains a local shopkeeper who suggests that Mr Lowry's widespread support owes something to what he called "the cute-hoor culture".

"There are a few people in this town who owe me money for various jobs and have no intention of ever paying me. It didn't surprise me at all when I saw these particular people on TV cheering Mr Lowry from the front row of one of his meetings. They all stick together," he says.

A Thurles barman - "I can't give my name because most of my friends support Mr Lowry" - says that the judgment of many people is clouded when it comes to Michael Lowry.

"They all knew for years exactly what he was up to but it didn't matter because he got things done," he says. He argues with his friends about the situation but says it's like talking to "a stone wall". "Mr Lowry has got it sewn up here."

Among the 20-somethings in the area there is a kind of apathy about the recent revelations, but even the resolutely apolitical have an opinion on the man formerly known as Lucky Lowry.

"I think he dyes his hair and I wouldn't be that gone on him," says one young woman in a Thurles pub. On the other hand, she tells you that most of her family had been employed in the sugar factory and Mr Lowry "was the only one who helped when it closed down".

"He was," she concludes, "the only minister for ages who has actually done things for North Tipperary."

Willie Kennedy, Fine Gael chairman of the Tipperary North constituency, says the current situation reminds him of the support the former justice minister, Sean Doherty, received in Co Roscommon during the dramatic events over a decade ago.

"The rest of the country just couldn't understand the support he was receiving in Roscommon," he says. "If people have a TD who delivers, it seems they are more inclined to disregard his faults. And that is what is happening here."