The contest for the five-seat constituency at the next general election, however, will see a diverse array of candidates on the ballot paper. The Fianna Fail ticket will include a woman, a wheelchair bound councillor and possibly the party's first ever openly gay candidate. The PDs last week added another dimension to the choice of candidate in Wexford.

Colm O'Gorman . . . who was abused as a young child by Fr Sean Fortune . . . is probably best known as a courageous campaigner to reveal the truth about child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. Now he's the PD stalwart in Wexford, and the head of the One in Four organisation has a far from traditional personal life.

His met his partner, Paul, on a blind date seven years ago. "I saw a man leaning over the balcony looking downstairs and I knew it was him, " O'Gorman recalled in 2003. Discovering the gay scene in Dublin was a revelation for the Wexford man. "I will never forget the first time I walked into a meeting and realised, 'My God, all these people are like me', " he once said.

O'Gorman has never made an issue of his private life, but his openness to discussing it is but one sign of the huge change in Irish life in recent years. "Paul and I are profoundly blessed to find ourselves caring for two children, " O'Gorman said in an RTE interview late last year.

When the children's Kenyan-born mother became ill, and was unable to care for them, O'Gorman and his partner became their legal guardians. Sean and Sofia now live with O'Gorman and his partner in Wexford. "We're just a family. People take us as they find us, " he said.

Winning a seat in Wexford will not be easy task for the PDs no matter how high-profile their candidate. The current breakdown in the constituency is two Fianna Fail, two Fine Gael and one Labour. Taking a seat from Fianna Fail is highly unlikely, so Colm O'Gorman will be asking the voters to return an extra government TD at the expense of Enda Kenny's alternative coalition. Labour's Brendan Howlin should be secure, so it seems that O'Gorman will have to target one of the two Fine Gael seats. It is a big ask.

The PDs have had mixed record with high-profile candidates. Tom Parlon spurned Fine Gael for the PDs before the 2002 general election and went on to win a seat in Laois-Offaly. However, Barney Rock of Dublin GAA fame never made it electorally for the party, while Mairead Foley, amid much fanfare, left a secure civil service position at the Department of Social Welfare but bombed at the polls.

Whether or not O'Gorman is eventually elected to Dail Eireann is in some ways irrelevant. The PDs have already won by simply securing his membership. The party's general secretary John Higgins will now find it easier to attract other nonpolitical figures into the world of electoral politics. O'Gorman will in effect act as an excellent calling card for the PDs.

Its all so different from the early part of 2001, a year out from the last general election when the PDs were on the rack.

The party was devoid of a distinct agenda and facing into the contest with only two outgoing TDs. Now . . . 12 months to the next general election . . . the party has eight TDs, is driving policy in government and has just concluded its best week in a very long time.

Along with the recruitment of O'Gorman, the PDs over the past seven days have shown themselves to be a small party with a big voice. Their national conference last weekend should have been dominated by the failures to eliminate hospital trolleys and overcome gangland crime.

Instead, the delegates, and the watching public, were given a very clear message . . . the era of tax cuts will continue but only if the PDs are in government. The party's political critics may 'tut-tut' over the wisdom of further tax reductions, but Harney and her colleagues are a 5% party. With 5% of the national first preference vote, the PDs are electorally viable and have a better-than-fair shot of being part of the next government.

The new tax policy is very much aimed at consolidating the core PD vote. The party has in the last week gone a long way in defining the terms of the forthcoming electoral debate. Economic success . . . low inflation, low interest rates and plenty of jobs . . . is by far the most comfortable battle ground for the current government.

Tax reductions is, without doubt, the best topic for the PDs. Neither Fine Gael nor Labour can win the next election by talking about the economy. Broadening the debate to what has been done with the fruits of our economic success is, however, a different discussion altogether.