There was once this Welshman who was shipwrecked on a desert island. Years later a ship sailed by and rescued him, and they found that he had built two little chapels. One of them was the one he worshipped in every Sunday.
What was the other one?
"That's the one I don't go to," he said.
And so it is with the Presidential election. They will all tell you why they are not voting for people. But not whom they would actually choose.
And so it must be by process of elimination that the bookies and the opinion polls and the nation can work out who is going to be the next President of our country.
`I'M not voting for Mary McAleese because I literally can't stand her accent. It would drive me berserk every time she opened her mouth for the next seven years. I know it's irrational but that's the way it is. I hate the way they say `How's about you?' up in the North - it makes my flesh creep and everything is a wee this and a wee that. It doesn't matter to me which side of the divide they are up there,
they all have these expressions that would sicken you. "Like the way they say bake. "You know, you must have heard them, I think they mean head or face or beak or something. . . `That wee girl always has her bake in a book,' or `Why don't you keep your bake out of my business?'
"No - I never heard Mary McAleese say it, but she could. Easily. "It is just the style they have up there. "Look I agree it's illogical but mark my words a lot of people feel like that, only they don't admit it. "No, I don't care that Fianna Fail shafted Albert and that she got in because he had to be thrown out, that's life. "It's a matter of having to listen to her accent until the year 2004. "To be desperately honest I don't even like listening to people from Donegal either." - (Man working in off licence )
`I'm not voting for Adi Roche. "It's not that I don't admire her, I do admire her. Someone told me that she was so persuasive she'd force you to do all kinds of good things and that if you looked round after talking to her you'd have five bald Russian children living with you for the summer. That's the kind of person she is. Which is fine. "As a person. But not as a President. "You see that kind of thing could get out of hand. She might take pity on some tribe somewhere and invite them all here to Ireland because they were being badly treated wherever they were. Don't get me wrong, that would all be very admirable but is it what we want?
"I mean, all this boom that we are meant to be enjoying would trickle away into the ground if there was a whole rake of unfortunate impoverished people from other lands arriving every day at the airport. "No, I know she didn't say that's what she plans to do, but to be honest it would be on the cards. If her background is being all caring and intense and reaching out and everything then she's not going to stop being that way when she gets to the Park. " - (woman walking dog along the East Pier)
`There's no way any sane person is going to vote for Dana as President of Ireland, I'm not someone who goes round insulting people and I was hoping that you could think of a way to write that down without it sounding offensive to the woman I'd appreciate it. "No, I suppose it would be difficult, but you get my point. "What would we be thinking of, going out and putting a perfectly pleasant little singing person into the highest office of the land because she has a nice smile and she's up for decency and family life? We're all for decency and family life I mean who do you know who says they want chaos and the total breakdown of the family?
"But the Dana thing is like a PR idea that sort of ran away with itself, the country is full of guitars waiting to be strummed when she goes in anywhere, and people swarming round in buses to take pictures of her because they remember her in the Eurovision and they have a chance to meet a real celebrity because she's on the campaign. "And obviously they're glad to see that's she's neat and normal looking, and hasn't gone mad like lots of entertainers do. But there's hundreds of singers who didn't go mad and were not trying to elect all of them as President. - (Mother waiting outside school to collect her children).
`The Civil War's long over, I know that but I'd find it very hard to give my vote to a Blueshirt. So I suppose that's part of why I'm not going to vote for Mary Banotti. Part of it, but there's more. It could be to do with Nora Owen. You see she was always frowning on television. The woman had a lot to frown about in her time, it may be said, but still she looked like the Mother of Sorrows.
"No I know it's not Nora you'd be voting for but they are sisters after all. And you may think this is silly but I think an Irish President should have an Irish name. You see if you heard someone say President Banotti wouldn't you think she was from Italy or Spain?
"Well not if you were Irish, obviously you'd know your own President. But other people. "And in a sense she's possibly a bit too interested in Europe. Yes I know we're are part of Europe but you know the way she's inclined to think that we're all well up in what's going on in Brussels and Strasburg. "To be honest I actually don't know why I'm not going to vote for her, these don't seem very good reasons but just by talking to you today about it all I realise I'm not." - (Man on park bench in People's Park Dun Laoghaire).
`I'm not going to vote for Derek Nally because he's a man and he's spoiled the whole thing by standing in the first place. "We were the object of world interest, a country meant to be old-fashioned and backward and what do we produce when it comes to Presidential election? Four female candidates - that showed them, the people who said we were all out of the Ark here. "And then a man came in, and do you know I wouldn't be at all surprised if he got in. You have no idea how nervous some men in this country feel about progress. "No you have not. You meet all kinds of liberal people who think men are delighted with the success of women, in the real world it's not like that. I know men who are voting for him and they never heard of Derek Nally no more than the man in the Moon before this and they're all nodding their heads sagely about him now. Men who say proudly that they wouldn't work for a woman boss. "I suppose it's not Derek Nally's fault that he's attracting a lot of these kind of whingers to his cause but they're coming out from under stones for him. Wait and see." - (Woman waiting in DART station)