He found his inner radical on the shores of the Dead Sea. Richard Boyd Barrett was in his early 20s, travelling, chasing adventure, lolling on that bridge that links college and career. He and his mates landed in Tel Aviv, where their romantic notions were made flesh and it wasn't a pretty sight. Move on, nothing for you here.

They travelled to the south of the country and found work on a Moshav farm in Sodom, the place named after the Biblical character who got into all manner of grief with his mate, Gomorrah. Palestinians were bussed in from the Hebron refugee camp to work for half nothing on the farm. Boyd Barrett listened to their stories of oppression and hate. He observed how they were treated as inferiors by the Isrealis. The injustice of it all angered him. He forged the anger into political belief.

"This was before the first Intifada and I was shocked by what I saw. The way they were treated, working for less money than the rest of us, the general racist attitude displayed by the farmers towards them. I was hugely radicalised by that."

He returned to UCD, where he was studying English literature, in search of a vehicle for his new-found politics. Amnesty International was an obvious starting point. "They said they just wrote letters, which I thought was very passive. Then I went to the Socialist Workers Party and they had a proper analysis of what was going on. They were tiny at the time, had something like one member, but that was how I got involved."

Twenty years down the line and little has changed. Boyd Barrett is still fighting the good fight. Middle age has not withered his ideals. If there is a cause that is broadly left-wing, you are likely to see his mug popping up somewhere on the front line. Have placards, will travel.

Today, many see him as a poster boy for left-wing radical politics. He would wince at such a weighted label, but there is little doubt that his profile, his middle-class accent, his ability in front of a microphone, even his looks, have contributed to his standing. Well-heeled mothers of four in his bailiwick of Dun Laoghaire might recoil from a bearded activist with a pronounced city accent. They look at Boyd Barrett, listen to him, and want to take him home and feed him.

In last June's local election, he topped the poll in his borough ward. In 2007, he narrowly missed out on election to the Dáil. During that campaign his relative movie-star appeal received a polish when it emerged that his biological mother is a real movie star, Sinéad Cusack. At the rate he's going, he'll be in the Dáil one day, although it's difficult to see him getting cozy on the independents bench with the likes of Jackie Healy Rae and Michael Lowry. At the moment, his days are filled with pain and pestilence on a local level and Lisbon and Nama on the national stage. Never let them tell you that socialists have more fun.

Looking in from the outside, the current recession must be a godsend for those who toiled in the wilderness through the decades of neo-liberal bling. "I wouldn't say it's a godsend because there is real suffering going on out there," he says. "Working as a councillor you see that. It's soul-destroying work. I'd have people on the phone crying to me. Others who are on the housing list but are struggling desperately because their rent supplement is cut. People who lost their jobs and are still waiting for social welfare for weeks. The calls are becoming more frequent and there is huge trauma because Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown just doesn't have the resources."

Although he was elected last June, it was in the wake of the general election two years ago that many people regarded him as their representative even though he wasn't elected to diddly squat. "I was seen as a kind of unelected elected representative," he says. "They came to me with their problems and I got to know the officials in the council through that. People who wanted me to represent them had to provide a note saying I was advocating on their behalf because I wasn't then elected."

He was elected under the People Before Profit Alliance, an umbrella group which includes a range of organisations. Two other members were elected to Dublin City Council in the June elections. He says the group has around 600 activists nationwide with other pools of helpers rippling out from the core.

"A network developed across the country over various campaigns in the last few years," he says of PbP's origins. "In Dun Laoghaire we had been active on local issues like bin charges, housing battles, Shell to Sea. These began to overlap and it became obvious that we should put ourselves forward in elections. There would have been people who wouldn't have been happy being represented by the Socialist Workers or other specific parties, so an umbrella group was formed."

Boyd Barrett's own beginnings were comfortably middle class. Adopted at a young age, he grew up in Dun Laoghaire with one brother. His father was an accountant, and Richard was schooled in the fee-paying St Michael's College. He first encountered radical politics through music, when he embraced punk as a young teenager. "There were loads of punks in Dun Laoghaire," he says. "Partly it was just people enjoying music, but you had bands like the Clash who were socialist, and there was an anarchist element and another thing was anti-racism."

Socially, he belied the perhaps caricatured image of kids from fee-paying schools in south Dublin living in a social cocoon. Between the music and the soccer he played, he drew his complement of friends from right across the social spectrum. Academia was no big deal. He got a good Leaving and studied English literature at UCD. It was from there that he took the year out in Israel where he saw what he regarded as wrong in the world and how he might contribute to righting it.

At home, his new politics wasn't flavour of the month. "They [his family] initially probably had that more cynical take on left-wing politics – if you're not a socialist at 20 you've no heart but if you're not a capitalist at 40 you've no brain," he says. "But they were never hostile about it. When I got into electoral politics they understood it more."

Cynicism isn't confined to those who regard socialism as a growing pain. Boyd Barrett reckons that in UCD, recruits to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were primarily drawn to the possibilities of networking, rather than any political philosophy. Idealism in his book, it would appear, even among the young, is the preserve of the left.

His attitude to fellow lefties also betrays a certain hubris that infects the conflict out there in the remote plains of socialism. He recalls a large public meeting in UCD after the Berlin wall fell. "The Socialist Workers were glad that it had happened, we were resolutely anti-Stalinist, but most people there were utterly demoralised. They had had illusions about eastern Europe."

He invokes a similar scenario in relation to Lisbon. When it is pointed out that many trade unionists and the Labour Party are voting 'Yes', he suggests that they are actually looking to Europe to create a superstate in opposition to the hegemony of the USA, whereas the 'No' voters on the left want no concentration of power.

After his degree he took off for another year, this time teaching English in Spain. When he returned he completed a masters in English literature. By then, politics had him by the short and curlies. There was no going back to civilian life now. A life of more or less full-time activism followed, give or take a few years teaching English in Dublin. Away from the frontline, he fathered a son with his partner, but they are no longer together.

For a number of years he survived on a modest stipend of around €1,000 a month from his party. Since June, he has got a little more through his role as county councillor.

With his education and opportunities, there is little doubt he would have been able to plough a more comfortable furrow in life, but he has no regrets. "If I hadn't been involved in politics I would have been involved in some way in the arts. That would have been motivated by my passion for those things, not for career ambition or a desire for large amounts of money. I was never motivated by money. Like anybody I don't want to live in poverty, but I never had an ambition to be rich."

About five years ago, he received a letter from the agency through which he had been adopted telling him his biological mother wanted to contact him. He had known since the age of seven he was adopted. He concurred to the meeting. Was he surprised to find his mother was a well-known actress from a famous family? "When you're faced with a situation like that you don't think in those terms," he says. "It was interesting that we had things in common, that she went to UCD and studied English, that her family were from Dalkey (near where Boyd Barrett grew up), that we had similar politics."

During the 2007 general election, the story broke that they were related. A cynic might suggest that the timing was perfect for an election candidate, but he is adamant that he had nothing to do with the publication. Despite possessing a candidate's craving for publicity, he refused to go on a number of talk shows which wanted him to discuss his background. "I want to set the record clear on that. I had nothing to do with that story, although I have a suspicion where it originated."

In fairness to him, his bona fides as a hard-working politician were well established by then. For now, Lisbon and Nama are occupying his time, but he sees major waves in the distance with the formation of the next budget. The placards are being planed down, the press statements drawn up. Take it as read that in the coming months you will see footage of him on The Nine O'Clock News, on the streets, in the frontline, coming at you from the left, pointing the way forward.