The Progressive Democrats always balance on the thin political line between survival and extinction. The forthcoming general election is no different for the party, with one significant exception, namely Michael McDowell. Such is the scale of his personality that it is easy to forget it is only five months since he replaced Mary Harney as PD leader. This weekend's conference in Wexford should have been about a party in transition from one leader to another. But, with the election so close, there is no time to pause and reflect. In any event, McDowell is not a man for pausing, and the PDs are now very much 'the Michael McDowell party'.

Over the past seven days, McDowell delivered multiple attacks on Pat Rabbitte, promised a Euro300 weekly pension and pledged to tackle gangland crime. He also put a controversial Euro1bn price tag on the Mahon tribunal, and all of that before he even took to the podium last night to deliver his first conference address as PD leader.

In Wexford this weekend, McDowell was defining his party against what they are not. Not the Labour Party. Not the Greens. Not Sinn FAcopyrightin.

McDowell's PDs are energetic, politically aggressive and, often, unpredictable. McDowell's PDs - as showed last night - will match and better any other income-tax proposal. They also hope to gain from leading the debate for reform of the stampduty regime.

But for all the emphasis on what marks out the PDs from their opponents, their message, stripped bare, is now a simple one - McDowell sees his party as Fianna FA il's best coalition partner.

"The stakes couldn't be higher for Ireland, " McDowell said last night, but neither could the stakes be higher for the new PD leader. Both Des O'Malley and Mary Harney led the PDs into postelection governments. Matching their achievements will be the biggest challenge of McDowell's political career, especially with many of the PDs' eight current DA il seats under threat.