For, in journalism, there is nothing more important than the political story and the pol corrs know it. Humbler hacks are not permitted over the threshold of their Leinster House lair, a scholarly arrangement of assigned desks and jumbled computer wires. It was here that PJ Mara, a legend in the galaxy of government press secretaries, famously decreed there would be "no nibbling at my leader's bum". Even to the (invited) sightseer, this room is a clarion call to goosebumps.

It is about to become a home-from-home for the new government press secretary Eoghan O Neachtain, a 49-year-old gaeilgeoir from Spiddal in Galway, who faces the daunting task of entering the lair every afternoon the Dail sits for the lobby's traditional briefing. Not even his military experience will have prepared the commandant and former press officer for the Defence Forces for this nation-shaping ritual.

He comes to the job after six years as the ESB's public-affairs manager, to fill the historymaking kitten heels of outgoing press secretary Mandy Johnston, now an adviser to the Taoiseach. Since Bertie Ahern became Taoiseach a decade ago, Irish politics has segued from the single transferable strategy of free phones in the car boot for every constituent to the omnipotence of the message. Image rules . . . and the keeper-inchief of the image is the taxpayer's servant, the government press secretary.

"It's going to be a very, very difficult job, " predicts one survivor. "Mahon [tribunal] is coming up in September, the economy's going into a rocky period, there's huge uncertainty percolating around the building industry and then there's events, dear boy. It's not like the ESB. If the Taoiseach is getting a bad press, they'll kick your head in. Then you have a really tough bunch of guys in the pol corrs' room. They're forensic. If you come in and say something on Monday and there's a variation on the theme on Wednesday, you're in trouble because these people eat, breathe and live politics. It's completely unforgiving."

O Neachtain, a rugby-mad 'man's man' who has done live match commentary of the Celtic League for TG4, is said to "adore journalists". He frequents reporters' favourite pubs, such as Doheny & Nesbitts and the Palace Bar in Fleet Street.

Some of his best friends are the Sunday World's Paul Williams, the Sunday Independent's J im Cusack and Evening Herald editor Stephen Rae, whom he came to know when they all worked as crime journalists and he manned the army's press office. He has even invested in media enterprises, having been an original backer of Ocean FM, the local radio station for the northwest. He currently holds a 1% share of KFM Kildare radio, worth 26,500.

Three's a crowd "He's very good in the club, " says someone who has worked with him. "He believes that journalists should be well-fed and -watered and that they are all ultimately clubby people; that if you take them out for a night on the beer or take them into your trust they won't breach confidences.

He's very gregarious. He's got good enough instinct. He'll be good at returning journalists' phone calls, having respect for them, believing that they're actually important.

"Where the test will come is when he's under pressure. He's going to be his master's voice and his master will live or die by what he says.

In that job, you can't be going asking for a response to every bit of tittle-tattle so you have to superimpose yourself onto your master."

O Neachtain will lead a press-secretary triumvirate, with his two deputies fitting the more familiar pedigree of poachers turned gamekeepers. The Green Party's appointee, John Downing (50), is a widely experienced and liked print journalist, the Irish Daily Star being his most recent beat as political correspondent. Radio One listeners will know him from frequent contributions to Vincent Browne's defunct latenight show and The Gatheringwith Pat Kenny on Fridays.

The third press secretary is Mark Costigan, a former radio reporter who has toiled for the PDs in government under Mary Harney's leadership, then Michael McDowell's, and now again during Harney's caretaker period. Whether a government can justify the cost of employing three press secretaries is a moot question but the political consensus is that each of the parties in the cabinet requires its own conduit to the media. When trust breaks down between government parties, everyone wants their side of the story to be the official version.

Former press secretary Sean Duignan illustrates this dictum in his memoirs, One Spin on the Merry-Go-Round, and his recollections of the night his boss Albert Reynolds got an early copy of the Beef Tribunal report, vindicating his integrity. Reynolds ordered 'Diggy' to inform the press immediately.

"The worst part is Fergus [Finlay, Tanaiste Dick Spring's spokesman]. I'm phoning the papers, " he writes, " when the door opens and I'm confronted by this Old Testament whirlwind of wrath, biblical beard quivering, like Moses about to smite the idolators of the Golden Calf."

John Downing's appointment came as a surprise because he had already announced his departure from the Star in June, with the intention of studying for a master's degree in Irish and European politics at the University of Limerick.

A languid, droll plain-talker whose laidback demeanour disguises his ambition, Downing is a native of Limerick city, where he got a BA in European studies at the NIHE (now UL). After a stint living in Lyons in France in the early 1980s, he stumbled into journalism in the Limerick Echo, graduating to the Kerryman as its Killarney correspondent, where he replaced the sports broadcaster Des Cahill.

Somebody who worked with him in the Irish Press, his next job, remembers him as "a plodding character . . . not the sort you'd expect to set the world on fire.

But then he went to the Irish Independent and became its European editor at a time when the EU was very important to this country. What he did and did really well was to go to Brussels, like going into a club with its own jargon and weird rules, and explain it in plain language to the readers. He built up a reputation for being solid and consistent and he always pretty much got what was happening."

As a self-confessed Jim Kemmyite (he canvassed for the late Limerick socialist's election), Downing's politics are regarded as somewhat left of centre. He wrote a biography of Bertie Ahern in 2004 entitled Most Skilful, Most Devious, Most Cunning, and is married to Welsh-born RTE journalist Bethan Kilfoil, whom he met in Brussels where she was working for the BBC.

Both Downing and O Neachtain live in Co Kildare but, after that, they have little in common.

Having worked in the pol corr system, the former is unlikely to upend the prevailing elitist culture cocooned in Leinster House.

'A government man' While O Neachtain is described by an acquaintance as "a maverick", he is not expected to radically change the system either. Their job is more difficult than it was for their predecessors.

There are far more journalists and more media outlets chasing stories now and the news values have changed.

Market analysts dictate that readers want personality-driven stories rather than ponderous newspaper-of-record epistles. Such a hardnosed environment is not as conducive to throwing up "characters" as it used to be in the days when PJ Mara became part of the satirical cast on Scrap Saturday, inspired by memorable utterances like "una duce, una voce".

Whereas Mara was a veteran of the rubberchicken circuit with Haughey during his wilderness years, Eoghan O Neachtain has been headhunted by Bertie Ahern after his advisers drew up a shortlist of candidates.

"Eoghan is a 24-hour-a-day man. He's affable and highly versatile, " says his former colleague.

"In the ESB, he was an ESB man. In the army, he was an army man. When he's in government, he'll be a government man. He seems to work best as a public servant. He only worked for a short while in the private sector, when he went to Gallagher & Kelly PR. He ran the accounts for Vodafone All-Stars and Foras na Gaeilge, the north-south language body.

"He's got a big heart. He would literally get up out of bed in the middle of the night to drive you somewhere as a favour. If he has a fault, it's his ego. It's fragile."

While personal vanity is nothing new in a government press secretary, it is usually accessorised with a hard neck. As described by one of its most infamous incumbents, Frank 'Brown Envelope' Dunlop, author of Yes Taoiseach, one requires "balls of iron and a spine of steel".

GOVERNMENT PRESS SECRETARIES
Frank Dunlop (1977-1981, and 1982)
Liam Hourican (1981-82)
Peter Prendergast (1982-1987)
PJ Mara (1987-1992)
Sean Duignan (1992-1994)
Shane Kenny (1995-1997)
Joe Lennon (1997-2002)
Mandy Johnston (2002-2007)