The elderly man is deep in conversation with Stephen Donnelly on the footpath of the Killarney Heights estate just outside Bray.

They are out of earshot but it seems after the chat on a private matter the gentleman is positively disposed towards the local Fianna Fáil TD who asks him expectantly: “Will you vote for me?”

“Ah,” the man says. “I think I’ll vote for Simon. I didn’t like the people outside his house.”

The reference to a protest outside Health Minister Simon Harris’s house last April signals there is still plenty of goodwill and sympathy towards the youthful Fine Gael Cabinet member in five-seat Wicklow, where an intriguing constituency battle with the man who wants his job, Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman, is under way.

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Mr Donnelly is seeking re-election for a third time and under the third different banner. Mr Harris and junior agriculture minister Andrew Doyle expect to be re-elected. Likewise Fianna Fáil’s Pat Casey.

Mr Donnelly and Sinn Féin’s John Brady are said by some to be in trouble, with the Greens’ Steven Matthews and Social Democrats’ Jennifer Whitmore, plus Fine Gael veteran and former Renua TD Billy Timmins, all in the mix.

But on a chilly and dark evening Mr Donnelly is popular and health is the dominant issue, door after door, with no one particularly happy about the state of the current system.

Mr Donnelly’s stump speech involves a reference to his private sector experience where, he claims, his job was “fixing health systems”.

An elderly lady, who prefers that her name is not used, talks about her daughter who is a nurse and tells Mr Donnelly: “It’s a pity she wasn’t here, although she probably would have killed you.”

She laughs and says later: “Simon Harris – God help him. Had he any hope at all? It wasn’t great when he took over. Can anyone do anything with it?”

Mr Donnelly is diplomatic but firm: “I am not saying Simon’s a bad guy. I know him, we went to the same school, he’s not a bad guy. I am sure he gets up every day – but the results have been catastrophic.”

Mr Donnelly has been a TD for Wicklow for nearly a decade. But in each election he has run with different stripes. In 2011 he was an Independent, in 2016 he was a Social Democrat, and now he is running for the party he once said had no “coherent policies” and was part of a “Stale cartel”.

The issue does not come up on the doors as much as you might expect.

Standing in his front porch, Adam Egan raises it immediately, prompting Mr Donnelly to launch into a well-rehearsed speech, insisting if you’re “serious” about changing the system then “you’ve gotta join a political party”.

“So who?” he asks rhetorically. “Micheál Martin’s a really decent guy. He has the potential to be a phenomenal Taoiseach.” He name-checks Michael McGrath and Lisa Chambers.

“I’ll definitely give him a strong consideration,” Mr Egan tells the Irish Independent afterwards.

Someone who needs no convincing is Tom O’Doherty, a retail supplier who works in Rathnew and has just arrived home from work.

“We need something different than we have at the moment. There’s no point going around worried about the colour of socks or stuff like that, there’s a country to be run,” he says.

He is annoyed at the “s**t they brought out a couple of weeks ago” – a reference to the now-postponed Royal Irish Constabulary commemoration. His vote for Fianna Fáil is a dead cert.

As we walk away, Mr Donnelly jokes: “That cost me €50, he’s been waiting around the corner for 20 minutes.”

The TD moves at great pace around the estate but with no clear plan as to which doors he does and doesn’t knock-on. It seems a little bit disorganised, although he insists there is a science to it. He also tends to linger at doorsteps.

Holding her young daughter in her porch, Michelle Lawrence listens for nearly 10 minutes as Mr Donnelly lapses into wonkishness. “Did you ever read ‘The Tipping Point’ by Malcolm Gladwell?” he asks her at one point before continuing with a long soliloquy on all the problems with the health service. By the end of it Ms Lawrence is leaning against the wall, appearing eager to get inside as Mr Donnelly drones on about “managing money better” and “taking pressure off the system”.

Mr Harris does not come up much on this canvass, but when he does the feedback is scathing.

At one front door, a mother of one is in tears, saying she had to wait seven years to get injections to ease her asthma and has to apply every year for a medical card.

“He better not come to this door,” she says of Mr Harris.

“He seems to be doing everything apart from health.”

At another house, a man tells Mr Donnelly: “Get rid of that fella. I don’t care how you do it.”

Mr Harris was unable to facilitate the Irish Independent to join him on a canvass last week.

Despite a difficult start to the campaign and shock poll putting it 12 points behind Fianna Fáil, several Fine Gael TDs said the feedback on the doors was not as negative as they had expected. “Based on what I am getting back I don’t feel a huge sense of alarm,” said one deputy. Another TD said: “The doors are not as hard as they were in 2016.”

Even Mr Donnelly doesn’t believe Mr Harris will lose his seat – but he does hope to replace him in the Department of Health after this election.

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