If Adi Roche campaigners needed evidence that their candidate was finally back on track, they found plenty of it yesterday in her own home town. The contrast between the warm, noisy blitz through the city and last Friday's more tentative progress could hardly have been more marked.
"I saw Adi on Questions & Answers," said a Cork woman as the candidate declared the Paul Street campaign office officially open. "It looked to me like she was really growing into that job." She was one of dozens to mention Q&A. All were proud that their "own girl" had "held her own and acquitted herself with dignity".
Campaign strategists view it as the turning point. The candidate has found a new self-assurance, evident in her more relaxed campaigning style yesterday and in how she handled the morning press conference. Flanked by local politicians, Toddy O'Sullivan, Kathleen Lynch, Sheila O'Sullivan, Senator Brendan Ryan and Dan Boyle, she repeated her challenge to the other candidates to spell out their ideas for the Presidency.
But her concern, expressed in Clonmel on Tuesday, about an elitism creeping into the campaign which could "frighten" people into believing that legal expertise was a requirement had been rebutted by a McAleese spokesman who said Labour had campaigned for Mary Robinson on the strength of her legal expertise.
What did Ms Roche have to say to that? Her response was swift and firm. "Perhaps they realise now that it was actually Mary Robinson's power of communication, her willingness to reach out to marginalised groups of all kinds, that made her Presidency the wonderful success that it was. It is very important that we do not overstate the situation in relation to the requirements of this office."
In any event, she added, she would have the advice of the Council of State which would include one of Ireland's greatest constitutional lawyers - Mary Robinson. And if she was not satisfied with the council's advice, she said, she could seek independent counsel.
Would she not be pushing the limits with her talk of a global peace summit? "It is well within the foreign policy that Ireland has always been associated with reconciliation, negotiation and facilitation. But everything would be resolved in discussion. If the Government were to say No, I would, of course, have to look at alternatives," she said.
She also rejected suggestions that she was just another "luvvy-duvvy woman" candidate. "No. I feel I am quite different. I am in a unique position because for 20 years I have operated outside party politics. I have a network that is a cross-section of all politics and none, and I would therefore be able to engage with all the parties because I have no vested interest.
"Also, because I have had such an activity-based life, people know exactly where I stand on important issues and I am calling on the other candidates for their opinions and issues."
She had already committed herself to funding her think-tank on youth with half her salary. Would she have a bob left at all if she got to the Aras, someone asked.
"Sean and I have a great capacity to live on very little," she said. "And I am a very thrifty person. Anyone who works at the project will tell you that when it comes to spending £1 or £5, I always ask if there is a cheaper way of doing things."
As news came through that most of her clothes were stranded at Dublin airport, where a Cork flight was cancelled amid fears of a leak of "hazardous materials" aboard the plane, she hit the streets, schools and supermarkets of Cork city. She was whisked along by a fast-moving, campaign veteran - Kathleen Lynch - and an entourage that at one point included two young women from Chicago, awed at the "strong female factor" in a presidential campaign. A Scottish student was there because "I share her vision".