MICHAEL McDowell was visiting an unnamed rural constituency.

Unannounced, he walked into the town's local garda station.

There was nobody behind the counter but the noise of the front door alerted the garda on duty to the arrival of a visitor.

"I'll be down in a minute. I'm just in the loo, " the garda shouted. When he did make it down the stairs he was stopped in his tracks to see a beaming minister for justice in the reception area. Panic swept across the garda's face and it took McDowell a few minutes to calm the man down. "They eventually had a cup of tea and some apple tart, " Séamus Mulconry says.

The departing PD policy director tells the story to support his claim that McDowell has "a wicked sense of humour".

There was nothing funny, however, over a week ago when Mulconry received the results of a national opinion poll which put PD support at a solitary single percentage point. "If I knew about the poll before I resigned, I would probably have held on out of a sense of loyalty, " the Co Clare man admits, half seriously. He says McDowell was gracious when told Mulconry was ending his two-year stint as PD policy guru to move to Edelman PR as head of public affairs.

Mulconry is an example of the type of backroom personnel employed by the main political parties in their quest to ensure their leaders look good and have the right message for the voters at general election time. However, he rejects the label 'party handler' preferring the description of 'adviser'. "I think too much stress is put on handlers and advisers. If a politician doesn't have vision and talent, then no amount of advice will get them there. The role of the adviser is to give the politician a steer, to suss out what is going on with the public mood. But if the politicians don't have quality, you won't sell the public a pup, " he says.

Like others who have spent time advising politicians, he admits his time working with a national party has increased his respect for all politicians across the spectrum. There are some good politicians and some bad ones, just like all professions. "People don't appreciate the quality of their politicians. I remember the story of someone who went to the US Congress and having listened to a debate said, 'Not all those politicians are very good.'

This was met with a response, 'Son, have you seen the electorate?'" A native of Kilkee in Co Clare, Mulconry spent a decade working on electronic-government projects with Accenture consulting before signing up with the PDs two years ago. He was not a political novice, having been an active member of Fine Gael during the Alan Dukes era. In more recent times, he was an unpaid director of communications for the Alliance for Europe during the second Nice Treaty referendum.

When the PD job offer arrived, Mulconry jumped at "the chance to get involved in politics at a senior level". He joined when Mary Harney was leader although the interview process meant both Harney and McDowell had opportunities to pose the difficult questions. He didn't know either politician prior to joining the PDs as director of policy. He found both Harney and McDowell open to policy ideas "so long as you could argue the case". Harney is described as "shrewd" and McDowell someone who "bubbles with ideas".

Among the long list of former paid advisers, the more colourful stories tend to emanate from media advisers. Individuals such as PJ Mara, Shane Kenny and Sean Duignan can keep a room in laughter with their tales from inside the political system. Most advisers, however, work quietly in the background shaping the political agenda without keen media or public attention. Mulconry says he spent much of his time locked away writing the PD manifesto for the forthcoming general election. While unwilling to give anything away, he admits it will restate traditional PD policy while "going beyond the core areas. . . [and] having a delineation from the coalition partner [Fianna Fáil]."

Like his counterparts in the other parties, Mulconry is a big believer in the value of focus-group research, which has become a staple information source for all political decision-making. "Focus groups help to break out of the bubble to get a sense of what the public is concerned about. The research helps inform the kind of things politicians need to talk about and how to talk about them in language people understand, " he argues.

The stint as a PD adviser has also made Mulconry critical of the perceived importance of the media in focusing on the issues that are dominating the public agenda. "The media tends to distort matters and is slow to pick up on the public mood. You don't see too many parents with buggies in the area around Government Buildings, " he says.

Despite the recent PD poll setback - which was out of kilter with the last Millward Brown/IMS poll for this newspaper - Mulconry is confident about the prospects for McDowell and his colleagues in the general election. "The PDs have a very strong brand. The party is summed up by Michael McDowell's phrase, 'honest politics, real results'. That gets to the essence of it - a liberal party not interested in too much intervention in the economy or in people's private lives and obviously also for low taxes.

Anyone writing off the PDs would want to be careful."