SEAN Haughey may want to step out of his father's political shadow, but his task is a difficult one. The name `Charlie' crops up several times in his canvass of Castletimon estate in Coolock and, on all but one occasion, the associations are favourable.
The Ben Dunne business doesn't come up once, but unmarried mothers and their allowances are the hot topic.
At a street corner a group of young men in this corporation estate raise an issue of equestrian interest which should be close to the heart of any Haughey. The lads want a piece of wasteland zoned as an area for grazing their horses.
"Maybe Charlie could give us a bit of land," one of them suggests.
"You never know now, comes the non committal reply of an experienced politician.
Young Haughey's style, though, could not be farther from the flamboyance of his father. Impeccably dressed in the good Sunday suit, Sean Haughey leads his team quietly through the estate telling them which streets to canvass, walking at a sharp pace between houses and then strolling up the pathway when there is a constituent at the door.
Some welcome him with open arms.
Mary Moran, an old age pensioner, is pottering about in her front garden. "I canvassed for your father and Frank Sherwin and Vivion de Valera in 1967 on the North Strand. I hope you'll turn out as well as he did."
The short cut between gardens is taken on a few occasions as Haughey nimbly launches himself over garden walls. "Vaulting ambition," it is called by one canvasser while a woman at her doorstep, not too well versed in the difference between steeple chasing and the flat, shouts encouragingly: "Go on, Shergar."
Campaign workers led by Jimmy Guerin, brother of the murdered Sunday Independent crime correspondent Veronica Guerin, carry two bundles of leaflets.
One, on buff paper, is the `Canvass Card' which describes him as "Young, energetic, sincere and hardworking. A family man, who genuinely shares the concerns of the community. A consistently good constituency politician" and, as the recorded announcement from the loudspeaker lorry had told us earlier, "a man who gets things moving."
The second leaflet is for those who are not at home known in the trade as the "Sorry I missed you" leaflet. It carries the address of the constituency office and a drawing of the candidate showing a distinct resemblance to a certain former Taoiseach.
Only once in the day was "the da" name mentioned in a derogatory way. A man in late middle age announced that Sean Haughey would not get his vote because, as he put it, "One of those ****ers is enough."
The Haughey team asserts that the matter of Charles Haughey and Ben Dunne has not come up once in the campaign and, unless the doorstep admonition above can be taken as a reference, it did not arise on the Castletimon canvass.
The issues which have arisen according to Sean Haughey, are crime and drugs, with a burgeoning number of parents, groups being set up in the constituency, and other local issues such as the Dublin Port Tunnel and waiting lists at Beaumont Hospital.
Suddenly a new issue presents itself. One woman is hopping mad about the idea that the "unmarried mothers are getting everything and married women are getting nothing". Haughey tells them he is for equality of treatment.
A couple of doors down, the "lone parents issue" is tested from all angles. A woman in a Leeds United T shirt is in the garden with her three grownup daughters.
"Give me £50 a week and I'll stay at home," says one of them. "No way I'm ever going to get married," says another, adding as she points to a baby in a buggy, "See her? She's an unmarried mother of the future."
Haughey calls, for equality again and, as it says in the leaflet, gets moving.
