The Fine Gael senator Tom Hayes could face a challenge for the party's nomination in the Tipperary South by-election, which he is the early favourite to win.
Mr Hayes's strong showing in the June by-election won by Mr Seamus Healy was the major feature of a campaign which produced many surprises, including a collapse in support for Fianna Fail.
Now the parties are ready to battle again, but this time it promises to be a different campaign. New candidates for Fianna Fail and Labour have altered the geographical context in which the election will be fought.
For now, though, most of the attention is on Fine Gael, which has shown no inclination to move the writ and is the only major party not to have selected its candidate.
The by-election was caused by the death last month of the party's TD, Theresa Ahearn, and there is increasing speculation that a member of her family will challenge Mr Hayes for the nomination. Such a move would leave Mr Hayes in a position similar to that of Mr Denis Landy, the Labour candidate who stepped aside in June to make way for Mrs Ellen Ferris, whose husband, Michael, held a seat until his death in March.
Mrs Ahearn's husband, Liam, said yesterday the family was not prepared to say anything on the matter at this stage. As a selection convention had not yet been organised there was "no pressure on us to say anything or do anything", he said.
Mr Hayes, however, says he expects to be the party's candidate. "I intend to be in there and I intend to win it . . . In the last election I was very much an outsider, but it developed into a two-horse race, and I came within a couple of hundred votes of winning."
Now, he believes, the high profile he gained in the last campaign will give him an advantage over the other candidates. As for the prospect of a challenge from a member of the Ahearn family, Mr Hayes says he and the late TD had a very good working relationship.
If he does stand he will, like his Fianna Fail and Labour rivals, be seeking to make a greater impact in Clonmel, where Mr Healy won almost two-thirds of the vote in June.
This time the Workers and Unemployed Action Group, which Mr Healy represents, is fielding another strong, Clonmel-based candidate, Ms Phil Prendergast, a member of Tipperary South County Council and Clonmel Corporation.
Ms Prendergast, a midwife and former member of the national executive of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, emphasises that the group's success is not entirely down to support in Clonmel. "Seamus got votes from every single corner of the county. . . I'm convinced I can win this and give us a second seat in the Dail."
The Fianna Fail candidate, Mr Michael Maguire, secured more than 4,000 first preferences in the last general election and is expected to do considerably better than Cllr Barry O'Brien did in June.
He says the constituency's relatively high unemployment rate, which is three to four percentage points above the national average, needs to be addressed immediately. From Lattin, near Tipperary, he is based in the west of the constituency, where he will be battling with Senator Hayes for local support.
At the opposite end, Labour councillor Denis Landy is certain to perform strongly in Carrick-on-Suir, where he topped the polls in last year's county and urban district council elections.
Mr Maguire is expected to top the poll but will need transfers from other parties to get him elected. Whoever of the other three finishes second on first preferences will fancy their chances.