Dana suggests she is the real liberal in this campaign. She is the broadminded one offering to represent liberal and conservative, believer and atheist alike.
It is others who are indulging in intolerant name-calling and intellectual snobbery, she says. Driven by misplaced fear and insecurity, they are trying to replace what they saw as a domination of Irish society by the right with a domination by the left. This could bring us to a post-liberal stage, she warns.
Lest anyone think her platform is limited to the questioning of what is called the liberal agenda, she refers regularly to economic issues, to poverty in the age of the Celtic Tiger, the dangers of over-reliance on foreign investment, the reassessment of Ireland's entitlement to Structural Funds in 1999 and dwindling agricultural subsidies.
Win or lose, she says, she would like to come back to Ireland to live. "It's always my intention to come back. I'd be very, very happy to come home."
She recalls watching an item on the television news with her husband about the presidential campaign and there she was, but she felt she was in a dream. "That couldn't be me," she thought.
She decided to run because she believed there was an injustice done in Ireland in the last few years. "I had been following what had been happening within the country over the past few years and I had been disturbed at what I felt was perhaps a desire not to take full account of what the people had to say."
This is, of course, a reference to the recent referendums on abortion and divorce. But she says it wasn't the result of the referendums that primarily concerned her but the manner in which they were conducted.
There was "a consensus of political opinion opposed to the people". In one referendum, she maintains, "the wording was so confusing that the chairman of MRBI said . . . that it reflected badly on the politicians that had drawn it up".
The conduct of the divorce referendum showed "a wilful disregard for the voice of the people. You had a government spending £500,000 of taxpayers' hard-earned money to support their argument and not allowing £500,000 of hard-earned money to support the other argument".
Although the courts declared this to be unconstitutional behaviour a week before the poll, she says the referendum went ahead. "Now to me and to any impartial observer there is something terribly wrong when that is allowed to happen and to pass virtually without comment. And if it happened in those two cases it can easily happen in others. Situations like that don't get better, they get worse."
She said that she had, in common with Irish people generally, a sense of justice that told her to stand against things she believed were not right. It was for this reason that she had decided to stand for the Presidency.
If elected, Dana says she will not express her political views and will take the President's formal and symbolic role very seriously. "Unless you were a stuffed mummy you'd have views of course but as President you don't exercise them in relation to the job."
She suggests that as President she would reluctantly sign an abortion Bill into law if there had first been "a proper referendum" on the issue. She also suggests that if there were such a referendum, the situation would not arise as abortion would be outlawed.
If there were no such referendum, however, she says she could not say what her attitude would be if she was required to sign an abortion law.
"We are living in a society where the vast majority of people are pro-life," she says. "I would contend that a more important question at this time is not whether a President would sign a Bill relating to that but, in fact, whether or not the Government, instead of legislating on a flawed referendum, would bow to the wishes of a majority of the people in this country and allow them a clear, honest, un-confused referendum."
But on the hypothetical question, if it were to come to it, would Dana have problems in signing such a Bill?
"Of course it would have to be discussed and passed through the different Houses and no doubt everyone would be looking for the assurance that it was the will of the people based on a proper referendum. You have no other choice but to sign it. Would that be easy to do? No. Do I think that it will happen if this country if there is an honest referendum? No."
In the absence of such a referendum, would Dana sign an abortion Bill?
"I really couldn't answer that in all honesty. It would be very high-handed of any President to go in there with an agenda that they would impose on the entire country. I would never be high-handed. I just want what is honest and constitutionally the right of the people of this country."
The one power over which the President has sole discretion - whether to grant a dissolution of the Dail to a Taoiseach who has lost the confidence of the House - is "quite straightforward", she says.
It has never been used. "I think the only time that it nearly happened was in 1982 with President Hillery. It has never actually happened in the country. It's not likely to be a problem for any President and I don't think it would be a problem for me." If it did arise, Dana says, she would make her own decision based on the circumstances.
Would she always accept the Government's advice on other matters?
The Government, she says, is "the elected ruling body of the people and I would imagine that you would try to work in synch with them as much as possible. You don't want a President with a political policy that could perhaps lead to a conflict between the Government of the day and the President.
"If you are the elected President of the people it could be very high-handed to act on your own agenda. I think there always has to be an awareness that rather than the leader, you are the servant of the people and always representative of them."
She would appoint people of diverse viewpoints who were neither politicians nor lawyers to the Council of State. "I'm allowed seven members. The other 16 are already in place from the Government of the day, past Taoisigh or Presidents, so even if I were to select people who were entirely of my frame of mind they are still outnumbered.
"My friends are mixed and very varied and I believe you shouldn't be threatened by differences of opinion and it's extremely healthy to have friendships with people who would be diametrically opposed to you in many ways."
So among those seven there might be people who would be diametrically opposed to Dana?
"Yes."
If there was a range of opinions that she trusted on the Council of State, she would listen to them when deciding whether to refer legislation to the Supreme Court. But whether she would always act on that advice "would depend at the end of the day on the actual Bill and that would be hard to tell you now".
She welcomes the dramatic economic growth of recent years but says there is a danger of over-reliance on foreign investment. Irish people have the skills and the talent to own their own economy, she says.
"We are all delighted no doubt with the investment in the country but we all know investors can pull out as quickly as they come in. Our people are running thriving businesses all over the world," she says, "and this should be replicated at home."
The State must now also prepare for 1999 when its eligibility for EU Structural Funds will be re-examined. "As we acknowledge the wonderful things that have happened, the improvements in our infrastructure and the security that our farmers have experienced, there is a sense that we have also got to acknowledge the areas that need attention, the fears. Farmers have watched dwindling subsidies," she says, and are aware that in a few years there may be further cuts.
She said the growing economy was not lifting all sections of society. "Very rapidly we are seeing a two-tier society developing. There is no justification in an economic boom for children sleeping in the streets . . . or the elderly afraid they don't have enough financial support and unemployment that is centring on areas that already had enough social problems."
For many people, drink and drugs were used as an escape from these problems. The number of suicides among young men was also "a symptom that there may be a lack of hope".
She is sorry Mrs Robinson took her candle, signalling a welcome for returned emigrants, out of the window of the Aras. "I think it is a symbolism that didn't leave when Mrs Robinson left. If I was elected President it would be a confirmation that it was a genuine light. I'm one of the hundred million emigrants. I think it would be a sign that if you want to come home that you can."
She would take up the opportunity to address the Oireachtas from time to time. "How often that would happen I'm not sure but I do feel it would be right. I believe there should be accountability of the President to not just the Oireachtas but to the people. I think any elected person should have accountability to those that elect them."
The majority of her work would be on this island, she says, although she would undertake foreign travel both to meet the Irish abroad and sometimes to show "support" overseas. "I would be aware of course that there are Irish people throughout the world and of continuing our long tradition of being a universal people, of going on behalf of the Irish people to where there needed to be a statement of support.
"But I would never forget that there is little point in going to the world if you don't pay close attention to your own home so I would believe that the majority of my work would be within this island."
She is opposed to suggestions made by the Constitution Review Group to dilute some of the religious references in the Constitution. When her name was first mentioned as a possible candidate, she read an article which "said I would shed a bad light on the modernisation and secularisation of Ireland as though these two words meant the same thing, which they do not.
"I was then interested to note that there is a move within the Constitution Review Group to remove all Christian references. What is happening within the country is there is a consensus of political opinion moving in one direction and ever widening the gap from where the ordinary people of this country are.
"The things that they cherish, the values that they have lived by, are being disregarded and I would say that whatever the constitutional review says, particularly on matters as personal as Christian references in a country that is 95 per cent Christian, nothing should be done without clear reference to the people first."
Her views have been severely misrepresented throughout the campaign, she says. "The citizen's right to state that they believe in God, whatever their denomination, should not automatically result in their being attached with a load of labels that include right-wing extremist, anti-this, anti-that, narrow-minded bigot. There seems to be an ease of associating all those labels to someone who believes in God."
Backing up her claim of misrepresentation, she outlines her support for the availability of divorce in certain circumstances. Marriage should be supported, divorce hurts children and fragments society but sometimes it is the only option, she says.
"No one has ever expected anyone to remain in an abusive marriage," she says. "Neither God nor man has ever asked that. We all know that there are no winners in divorce, that the most pitiful victims of it are the children, so surely bearing that in mind the law and society should tilt to support marriage as much as possible.
"But unfortunately civil divorce has often been the only reluctant resort for women who have had to seek support for themselves and their children. But should we not look further down the road and see where other countries have gone and prepare ourselves and protect ourselves from the pitfalls?
"Ever-liberalising divorce laws, which has been the pattern in other countries, has resulted in a 40 per cent divorce rate in England, 50 per cent divorce rate in America and a subsequent fragmentation of society which has resulted from the fragmentation of the family.
"That's not a thought or a truth that belongs to any religion or any country or even any time. We all know, if we honestly look at it, that the strong family is the basis of strong society. Should we not then hold up the ideal without excluding anybody who doesn't reach it because we all know things are going to happen, human nature is human nature, but do we discard the model because of that?"
She has been labelled by people as a result of their fear, she says. "Fear that somehow these [liberalising] changes that have been made - and I have to say some of them questionably made without due respect to the voice of the people - will somehow be snatched away from them. I think that we have to acknowledge that there is a polarisation because on the other side there are people just as fearful that all they hold dear is being chipped away, even their voice."
This fear that her candidacy appears to have inspired in some is misplaced, she maintains. "Because what I was taught as a child was that you start by respecting the dignity of the other person and their right to their own beliefs and their own views."
She has continued out of necessity to do this during her life. "I have worked 27 years in a business where I would probably meet more diversity in a week than most people would meet in their lives. I would never have survived if I was a right-wing blinkered person."
She has been a victim of intellectual snobbery, she maintains. "As a people we have suffered the intellectual snobbery of others, and to impose the same intellectual snobbery on sections within our own society shows we are not as mature as we should be and not as secure as we think we are."
She says the abuse she has received during the campaign has not been unduly hurtful on a personal level. "I'm at an age where I know that not everybody is going to love me. I also realise that many of the things thrown at me were actually aimed at what some people felt I stood for, and I believe that there needs to be an honest re-examination of attitudes and perceptions in this country."
Liberals should not try to "replace what was perceived as the stranglehold of the right with the stranglehold of the left. Because then you're in a post-liberal age and the pendulum is going to swing the other way. You have to catch it when it is in the middle and I believe I can bring that to the Presidency."