We hear the train-wreck a comin’

A singing Taoiseach, samba drums, and a slightly antisocial socialist confronted bleary-eyed commuters at St Stephen’s Green Luas stop.

Eamon Gilmore was first on the scene, but, luckily for him, the tannoy system did not announce the reality of the situation: “The campaign train-wreck now arriving on platform two is the 20.14 Labour Party which terminates here.”

Slumping in the polls, the Tánaiste appeared to hurry past commuters heading straight for the media huddle where he delivered a few sound bites and then skedaddled, leaving the Labour samba band looking a bit pointless as they played on without him.

Mr Gilmore’s curious strategy for this campaign appears to have been to avoid the electorate as much as possible. The Tánaiste does not really do voters, it would seem, which is just as well as voters do not really do Labour any more, if the polls are to be believed.

How different from An Taoiseach who turned up at the same stop just afterwards and was positively ravenous for voters, or “fresh meat” as they soon became known.

Typical public transport really, you wait ages for one party leader and then two arrive at once.

It had been a rather staid affair until Mr Kenny’s blast of energy, with the Fine Gael candidate standing there as yawning commuters greeted his presence with either disinterest, or shrugs of mild contempt.

“Morning... I’m Brian Hayes. Morning... I’m Brian Hayes. Morning... I’m Brian Hayes...” he kept repeating in the manner of a man desperately trying to remember both what time of day it was and his own name.

But then Electric Enda chugged along the line and the canvass suddenly turned from yawn to foghorn as the rhythm of the samba band kicked in again in the background.

The Taoiseach’s can-do canvass attitude was infectious as even Mr Hayes chirped “I hear the train a-comin’,” as a tram burst into view, triggering Mr Kenny to exclaim “Johnny Cash” before trilling: “I hear the train a-comin’/ and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when...”

Bemused commuters still largely ignored the pair, but it was now much more difficult to pretend not to hear them.

When a journalist referred to the people spilling out of the next tram as “fresh meat”, Mr Kenny seized on the remark with glee as he waded in to shake hands: “Fresh meat? Very good actually, yeah. Fresh meat she said,” he giggled.

As Mr Hayes left, the Taoiseach shouted “Are you going to the action plan for jobs thing? Myself and Gilmore are doing it.”

When asked if the jobs plan and the flurry of other announcements in the past week were not just election stunts, the Taoiseach boomed: “Oh. God. No!” in the most theatrical of manners.

Mr Kenny gets political irony — who knew that was coming down the tracks?

For the latest election news and analysis visit our special Election 2014 section.