There is no element of triumphalism when the Independent TD, Mr Jackie Healy-Rae, outlines a bonanza of projects which he claims he has secured for his Kerry South constituency since he pledged his conditional support for the Government in June 1997.
As far as he is concerned, it is a practical, unsentimental business: the Government needs his vote, so it is delivering to Kerry South. But he knows that, come the next election, the gloves will be well and truly off. "I will have to take on the might of everything Fianna Fail throws at me to take my seat."
A veteran Fianna Fail grassroots activist, he was part of the Neil Blaney-led machine in hard-fought by-elections in the 1960s. He broke with the party at the last election having failed to secure a nomination, and was elected as an Independent.
After failing at the convention, he travelled to Dublin to personally ask Mr Bertie Ahern to add him to the ticket, but he only heard again from Mr Ahern when his vote was needed to secure the election of the FF-PD Coalition.
Mr Healy-Rae shares the constituency with the hardworking Fianna Fail Minister for Justice, Mr John O'Donoghue, and the rivalry is sometimes intense. In the past, Mr Healy-Rae has joked that he represents one of the four wheels in Mr O'Donoghue's State Mercedes. Mr Healy-Rae, it is noted locally, also drives a Mercedes.
Mr Healy-Rae concedes: "There must be an element of tension between us. But if I said the Minister never did anything for me, I would be wrong. We can work fine together."
Top of his agenda in early days was a replacement industry for the Pretty Polly plant in Killarney, which had closed, having once been a huge employer in south Kerry. "I got a written commitment from the Government that there would be a factory provided there within a time-frame of about 2 1/2 years. And, in fairness, a factory, Sara Lee, which makes ladies' apparel, and will eventually provide 300 jobs, was delivered within about that time."
A further industry, the Rosenbluth travel call-centre, with a potential for 250 jobs, was secured with Mr O'Donoghue's help. "The two of us jointly met Mary Harney, and she pledged to do something for Killarney. And she did."
Mr Healy-Rae lists work on a series of roads, including the road from west Cork to his home area of Kilgarvan. "The Department of the Environment provided nearly £400,000 a year over a few years. There have been massive repairs to that road, but there is still huge work to be done."
There was the work undertaken on the access road to the Liebherr plant in Killarney - critical, he says, to the future survival of the industry in the town, while he secured "very big sums" for the Killarney-Killorglin road, especially at Beaufort.
The building of a new pier in Cromane, a project he stitched into the Dail record on the day the Government was formed, will commence shortly, he says. "When Michael Woods was in the Department of the Marine, he did a lot of work on that, and Frank Fahey has the same commitment. It will, I believe, cost a few million pounds."
Funding has also been secured for small piers and harbours in his sprawling constituency. "Some of them, in places like Blackwater, Caherdaniel and Portmagee, had not been touched for years. Sums like £35,000, £40,000 and £50,000 have been allocated, and almighty work has been done."
There was money, too, for sewerage schemes. "Noel Dempsey has sanctioned the Rathmore and Farranfore schemes. And I have a firm commitment from him, and when he gives a commitment, he honours it. He will give us further money for smaller schemes."
Mr Healy-Rae scored a political victory - critical to his future - when he persuaded Mr Dempsey, the Minister for the Environment, to abandon a proposal debarring TDs and chairpersons of Oireachtas committees from contesting last year's local elections. "He came to see me in Killarney, when he was visiting Kerry, and I told him that I was running for Kerry County Council and that no man or woman would change my mind."
But, he admits, he was less successful in seeking an extra half-hour opening time for pubs on Sunday nights under the Intoxicating Liquor Bill. "The other Independents and myself wanted closing time at 11.30, instead of 11, and have customers out by midnight. We made our case to Bertie Ahern at a meeting, but he said he could not concede the extra half-hour because he wanted a country where people would get up for work on a Monday morning.
"I said: `Taoiseach, listen to me, what about the three buses full of people outside my pub in Kilgarvan on a Sunday night, ready for the disco in Kenmare, where they would be until 2.30 in the morning?' Bertie said we were a people recognised for being late for work on Monday, and he did not want to add to that.
"The four of us had a meeting with John O'Donoghue in Seamus Brennan's office. The Minister for Justice put out his two hands and said the Government needed the four votes to pass the Bill. We withdrew and had a meeting in Harry Blaney's office, and we decided we wouldn't hold up the Bill. You couldn't have newspaper headlines about the Government falling over pub-closing time on a Sunday night."
Mr Healy-Rae provoked a mixture of envy and anger among Fianna Fail backbenchers when he succeeded in having Kerry and Clare included in the counties nominated for maximum EU funding by the Government in November 1998. Returning to Killarney, he was carried shoulder-high by local farmers. But the counties were excluded when the plan was finalised in Brussels. "I think that happened because of the unwarranted publicity that was created. It looked to the fellows in Brussels that they were being dictated to by people like me."
Farmers, some of them on smallholdings, make up a significant number of his constituents, and he is a frequent early-morning visitor to the Department of Agriculture with their problems.
"Two years ago, when there wasn't a bale of hay in some places, south Kerry was included in the fodder scheme. The officials in the Department are first-class operators."
An abortion referendum is not on his agenda. "I'll be putting no pressure on the Government, because there is no pressure on me. One woman in the constituency mentioned it to me twice, and nobody else."
His ongoing support for the Government will depend on its ability to meet his constituency demands and not "blackguard" him. "But any man who thinks it is unqualified support, and that I would take what they would give, would be raving out of his mind. There are times, you know, when Fianna Fail still thinks it still has an overall majority."