When Catherine Connolly took to the stage, it was a moment of sheer delight for the audience of around 200 people.
Ranged behind the Independent presidential candidate were politicians from the left-wing Opposition parties - Mary Lou McDonald and Holly Cairns among them.
This show of collective unity seemed to imbue people with the belief that this was the start of something special.
It also put a pep in the step of Ms Connolly who spoke for around 20 minutes about where her politics came from and what vision she had for the future.
It hadn't been so rosy earlier in the day after comments she made on the BBC’s Talkback programme about Hamas precipitated a row with the Taoiseach and triggered a statement from the Social Democrats that they would not "have used the same language as Catherine".
In her campaign launch address, Ms Connolly didn’t reference the row but spoke of Gaza in trenchant terms in that she could "never accept the normalisation of genocide".
She also addressed what she views as the injustices in Ireland today.
Homelessness, she contended, was the "collateral damage of a neo liberal ideology" which knew the price of everything and value of nothing.
The Independent candidate also gave economists a good kick for having a myopic view of what counts in society.
She referenced that our health system is not fit for purpose; we don't have an integrated transport system; and the climate emergency is being ignored.
After a time, it sounded as if this was an Opposition campaign speech in a General Election rather than a race for the Áras.
Then came the pivot.
Ms Connolly said, repeatedly, that it had been a "tortuous" decision to run for the presidency, but she’d come to realise the public found her to be a symbol of change.
Ms Connolly then defined herself as an "inclusive candidate" who would examine issues from a right or wrong perspective, rather than the political spectrum of left / right.
A self-described private person, she said she recognised that she had to talk about herself.
She referenced coming from a large family; a girl who joined the Legion of Mary; a person who joined the Order of Malta and ultimately became a community activist which informed her politics which are socialist.
And that’s her challenge.
One the one hand she needs to fire up the left to get momentum into her campaign but, on the other, she needs to have a broad-based appeal to reach beyond that base.
The politicians behind her had spoken about preventing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael securing the Áras but Catherine Connolly needs some of that support to have any chance of winning.
At the end of the event, some journalists asked from the floor if there would be a news conference so she could answer questions about her position on Hamas.
Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys had spoken to the media for 20 minutes following her campaign launch in Monaghan a few weeks ago.
Ms Connolly chose not to speak.
The glow of the campaign launch will fade quickly as the campaign grind continues, and the media demand answers on any and every occasion.
