HE BOUNDS into the pub, straight from prison. He sees things in there that make him angry and sad. He knows that had the cards of fate fallen in a different way, he might have been a contender for that road himself.

So might his old mate, Paul McGrath. The two men negotiated the straits of childhood, shoulder to shoulder, across a bleak desert devoid of emotional attachments.

Football saved McGrath. Victor Boyhan wasn't blessed with innate talent, so he had to fight hard to compensate himself for a stolen childhood. One of his weapons is anger, not directed at himself, but outwards at injustice wherever he sees it. And he gets angry when he sees some of the inmates in St Patrick's Institution, where he is on the visiting committee.

"I see loads of lost opportunity in there, " he says. "Kids who grew up with me could be in there and today kids are even more vulnerable. At the end of the day each of those individuals has potential and that is the challenge for modern politics."

Victor Boyhan is an unlikely politician, and an even more unlikely Progressive Democrat, the party of which he was one of the founders. Recently, he had a walk-on part in McGrath's searing autobiography, Back From The Brink. The two men grew up in Church of Ireland institutions where they became firm friends.

In the book, McGrath recalls how Boyhan broke his leg in the Bird's Nest. What he doesn't mention is that the latter child spent 18 months in hospital as a result.

McGrath describes Boyhan as "a successful politician, a TD representing the Progressive Democrats in Dun Laoghaire".

The description is inaccurate, but would certainly represent Boyhan's ambition.

For his part, Boyhan's contribution to the book rings with the kind of pride more usually reserved for a family member than friend. "If he was a black boy, brought up working class with two parents, he'd be a remarkable story. But the fact is that he was always disadvantaged, all these odds were against him . . . colour, racism, the narrow minds of '60s Ireland.

"It may sound a little strange to say that a child set out to be great, but I actually think that Paul McGrath did. He drove his own destiny. Nothing, but nothing, was going to stop him."

Boyhan didn't have an easy ride himself. He was born into institutional life. At the time of his birth, six siblings were already in care because of family circumstances.

He is conscious that delving into the past may open old wounds with some of them.

"It is a dilemma, " he says. "I'm conscious that in a way I'm also telling their story and they mightn't be happy about that so I have to be careful."

His brothers and sisters were placed in different homes to him, and he wasn't aware of his family until he was seven. His parents' marriage fell apart early on. They were from contrasting C of I backgrounds, a father who was "a gambler and alcoholic" from poor Laois stock, and a mother from well-to-do Wicklow farmers.

Things didn't work out. Remarkably though, through their troubles, the couple persisted in maintaining a sporadic relationship against the wishes of family and in the face of their inability to cope. Boyhan reconciled himself with them both in later life.

At the outset, he spent his first three years in an adoption home.

When he turned three, he was over the hill in adoption terms. He graduated to the Bird's Nest home, in York Road, Dun Laoghaire, where he first met McGrath.

While his introduction to the town was a mere quirk of fate, it was to prove a lasting relationship.

He didn't experience or observe the level of abuse that has come to the fore in recent years. But there was plenty of cruelty, both intentional, and as a result of ignorance.

"We didn't know any better, " he says. "It was a structured life and in some ways I suppose it was quite brutal."

The home was advanced in the matter of race. Apart from McGrath, there was a smattering of other black and Asian kids, most of whom were fathered by medical students. Boyhan knows a few who went on to achieve in the fields of law and medicine themselves. "You could see straight away they were bright, it was in the genes, " he says.

One repeated indignity was when the boys were told "nice people" were coming and some of them might be fostered. They were lined up to be inspected by the nice people, in the upper hall on wet days, in the yard when it was dry. A shortlist of candidates were told to step forward. The rejected ones dispersed and kept an eye on who would land the luck.

Then it was whittled down further, until somebody was chosen, handed hope of life beyond the walls.

"When you are put through that a few times it can get to you, the rejection, " Boyhan says. "You can start to question yourself."

At school, they were signposted as being different, having to wear uniforms, while the local children dressed casual.

"There was a sense of apartheid there, " he says. "I mean, in things like reading age we were behind.

When you are emotionally retarded that affects your ability academically. Our needs weren't being met in the whole area of personal development."

At Christmas, the boys were taken to Dun Laoghaire town hall to sing carols for the borough councillors, and were duly rewarded with seasonal gifts. It was there that Boyhan got his first taste for politics, breathing in the sense of wonder that the individuals before him had been placed there by the will of the people.

His choice of career was also, he believes, informed by early years.

After being cut loose at 17, he studied horticulture at the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, an interest he traces back to his early years in which the children weren't even exposed to grass behind the high walls that housed them.

"I was a child and then I was a man, " he says of his upbringing. "I didn't have a youth. I remember, when I got a flat when I was 17, looking out the window at a crowd of people my own age and thinking I should be doing what they are."

Beyond work, he developed twin passions, which aren't unrelated.

Once the veil of the past was drawn back, he was to the fore in seeking out justice for those who had suffered institutional abuse, in all its different forms. He sought the establishment of the Redress Board, although he didn't seek recourse there himself. He assisted many among the damaged in their efforts to be recompensed. "I am not a victim, " he says. "And my personality stood to me when I was growing up. Others weren't as fortunate."

He was also involved in the attempts to have a full inquiry into the use of children in homes for testing drugs. The campaign ultimately failed, earlier this week, and Boyhan doesn't hesitate in criticising his party colleague, Mary Harney, for her refusal to set up a full inquiry.

His other foray into the past involved an attempt to reclaim it.

He pushed to have access to his file, acting as a test case for others to follow. Around 10 years ago, he was finally given it. On the day of acquisition, he carried the file out to his car and began reading, before an epiphany tugged at his emotions.

"I remember opening the file and thinking this is like being dragged through a bush backwards. I had been in limbo. I remember saying 'this is me'.

Then there were tears. I was a survivor, I had come through it."

Politics has also tested his resolve. He rallied to Des O'Malley in the mid-'80s after O'Malley's 'Stand by the Republic' speech. He was there at the outset when the Progressive Democrats came into being.

Since then, he has held every elected office at constituency level, but his foray into national politics hasn't been as successful.

In 2002, after urgings from members, he put his name forward for the Dun Laoghaire constituency. He was up against party royalty, O'Malley's daughter Fiona.

She wasn't exactly a parachute candidate, but neither had she roots of any depth in the area.

Boyhan was asked would he consider stepping aside. Expediency demanded that the leadership back O'Malley. The prognosis for the party prior to the election was not good, and if they were seen to be rejecting a scion of the founder, it would be further grist to the mill of the doomsayers.

But Boyhan had come too far to step back into line. He insisted on standing, and gave the speech of his life to delegates, some of whom were strange faces to him despite his 17 years to the fore in the constituency.

He was beaten by a single vote.

In 2004, he was among the government parties' councillors who were culled at the local elections, losing out by 20 votes.

His background, his passions, they hardly mark him out as a typical PD. "I constantly ask myself about that, " he says. "But I am proenterprise, I believe in hard work and the separation of church and state, and greater empowerment for the individual. My upbringing politicised me and in politics I've been able to pursue the issues that matter to me."

Away from the grind, Boyhan runs his own successful landscaping business. He doesn't have a family himself, and he muses that that might be attributed to the baggage of his upbringing.

As far as politics is concerned, he ain't done yet. "I would still like to be in national politics, " he says.

"I am ambitious for my community. But I don't want to be a career politician. I wouldn't stand anywhere else. Dun Laoghaire is my home. I could have been sent somewhere else but I wasn't. And that's really the story."