NO PRIZES for guessing the main topic of conversation around the corridors of Leinster House last week. Given the penchant for navel gazing in Irish politics, it shouldn't come as a surprise that it wasn't the woes of the health service, nor the country's appalling record on the environment, but a certain Mr Frank Luntz which dominated the chat over lunch and cups of coffee.

RT�?'s Week in Politics show has certainly grabbed attention with its imaginative decision to ask the high-profile US pollster to conduct televised focus groups assessing the mood of undecided voters on various candidates, parties and issues.

But, even before it emerged that last Sunday's show featured one Fianna Fáil member, and another ex-member, in what was supposed to be a group of undecided voters, not everyone within the confines of Dáil �?ireann was impressed by what they had seen to date.

Focus groups may have been a proven and respected marketing technique in the world of business for decades, but they still attract a lot of scepticism in political circles.

The standard question from those sceptics last week was along the lines of: "How do we know these people are representative of the wider voting public?"

It's a fair question. The TV schedule would never be able to accommodate the succession of focus groups that would probably be required to ensure that the wider views of the electorate were fully reflected. The presence of the TV cameras is also far from ideal if the object of the exercise is to have people say what they really think.

Others noted the conflict between the findings of the first Frank Luntz show in December - which suggested major support for a FF/Labour coalition - and the recent Irish Times opinion poll which indicated that option was only third in voters' preferences, behind the current government and the FG/Labour option.

However, like it or not, focus groups are here to stay. It's possible to debate their merits for hours, but what is not in question is their importance to the main political parties in Ireland and abroad. It's not that new a phenomenon either. Bill Clinton's 'It's the economy stupid' sign was driven by focus-group research. Tony Blair's New Labour has also been a major user of focus groups, while here in Ireland, Fianna Fáil has been using them for the past decade. The one person Bertie Ahern chose to single out for tribute on the night of Fianna Fáil's 2002 election victory was Peter MacDonagh, the party's whizz kid when it comes to polls and focus-group interpretation.

Whatever criticisms there might be of the two Luntz shows, they have unquestionably shone a light on an area of research previously only accessible to a select group of party insiders.

Bear in mind also that those same insiders seem pretty unsurprised at what has emerged from the Luntz programmes so far. In the days after the first show, Fianna Fáil's PJ Mara was quoted as saying that the research carried out by the programme was "nothing new" and "we are not unfamiliar with it."

Watching last Sunday night's programme, it's now pretty obvious why, for example, Enda Kenny chose to make that speech where he described Ireland as a "Celtic and Christian" nation. Many of us in the media might be uncomfortable with such sentiments - this writer certainly is - but that doesn't mean they don't reflect public opinion.

And focus groups are simply another means of assessing what public opinion is.

If it isn't happening already, you can bet that every major new policy direction and every advertising campaign by a political party will in future first be run past a focus group, or a number of focus groups, before being unveiled to the wider public.

Their influence will only increase. The role of focus groups in dictating the outcome of the next leadership contest in Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael is potentially enormous. In Britain, the positive reaction to David Cameron in a focus group organised by Luntz on BBC's Newsnight firmly established him as the number-one contender for the Tory leadership. What price on somebody doing a similar exercise once Bertie Ahern stands down from the Fianna Fáil leadership - and who's to say it won't have an equally dramatic impact on the outcome?

The fear among the traditionalists is that politics will become less and less about what you say than how you say it and how you look while doing so. But that trend started when television began and is nothing to do with focus groups.

Certainly, focus groups do seem to confirm the belief that the electorate is more disengaged from politics than 20 years ago, but it would be simplistic to assume that general elections were more policy- and debate-oriented back then.

Sure, we used to scoff a couple of decades ago at US presidential elections that seemed to hang on seemingly trite phrases such as 'You ain't seen nothing yet' and 'Read my lips, no new taxes.' But in retrospect, is it any more ridiculous than general elections that were based around divisions from a civil war that had happened more than half-a-century earlier?

Irish politics has certainly changed in the meantime, but the main lesson to be learned by politicians from last Sunday night's programme were probably as relevant 20 years ago as they are today - if they want to get the attention, and the support, of the electorate, they have to personalise and simplify their message.

Whatever their merits as a research tool though, a good politician shouldn't need a focus group to tell him that home truth.