All of which rendered the hostelry ideal for the PD conference over the weekend.

There is pain in the polls, but this doughty lot punch above their weight and came together to maximise performance for the big day out.

There is also a wall at the back of the hotel, where during the conference, the poor were lined up to be shot. Okay, little joke, and why not, as the party's radical incarnation is now in the past. These days they can embrace like Bertie, and spend money as if they had graduated from a school of socialism.

Irony, however, is still beyond them. On Friday evening, party leader Michael McDowell rounded off another voluble week with a few comments straight out of The Simpsons. On Tuesday, he promised a loadsamoney giveaway with a Euro300 pension. In Wexford on Friday, he said he would not engage in auction politics. On Wednesday, he said the Mahon tribunal would cost Euro1bn. On Friday evening, he declared that nobody could possibly know how much the inquiry would cost. But, he assured the country, he was still right.

All of this was delivered without as much as a hint of a grin or a wink. Such self control denotes a particular strain of brilliance.

The embracing began on Friday night. McDowell welcomed defecting Fianna FA iler Terry Sheehy, telling him "you're among friends now".

There wasn't a dry eye in the house at the sight of this soul being saved.

On Saturday, more delegates deboarded the complimentary buses from Dublin, Cork and Limerick and filed in to replenish their political souls for the battle ahead.

They trooped past the large cardboard cutouts of the party's candidates scattered outside the main hall. There's the TA naiste in cardboard, and over there is Liz, and, look, Tom Parlon and Colm O'Gorman. And that fella there is? who he? Your woman in that photo, she's? is she a senator? Who are these people? It ain't easy being a margin-of-error party.

Inside, Parlon was rising above the dross to introduce his own version of an Anti Social Behaviour Order. He wants an Anti Social Isolation Initiative to target people who are lonely and isolated, which might be a cunning plan to help the party itself if things don't go well in the election.

Elsewhere, the leader was being as obliging as ever to the media, talking about how Armageddon awaits if the PDs are thrown out. When asked about the prospects of their candidate in Cork, some senator called Minihan, McDowell said he was sure he would be elected in Cork North Central. Minihan is standing in Cork South Central. See?

Even Mac doesn't know much about these people.

Back inside, the fare struggled to rise above the boredom endured at all these conferences. Tim O'Malley got up and spoke about his own courage, a topic he excels at. Then that Minihan chap laid into thugs and drugs and crime and how he was once a soldier and all this shooting going on and he wasn't going to stand for it anymore.

The day wore on like that.

The quality of rhetoric was no more or no less than you would expect at an average Blueshirt rally. And, who knows? By the time the next annual conference comes around, this outfit and the Blueshirts may chime as one.

For now though, they haven't.