Inside Politics:The 30th Dáil will meet on Wednesday for its first substantive session since the reordering of the political world after the general election.
Some things have changed since the 29th Dáil was dissolved on a sunny Sunday at the end of April, but the really important ones have remained stubbornly the same.
The return of Fianna Fáil to power for the sixth time in a row, after a general election, is clearly the strongest thread of continuity with the last Dáil and all the preceding ones back to 1987. Another unchanging feature of the political landscape is that the Mahon tribunal investigation into the Taoiseach's personal finances dominates the headlines, just as it did in the last days of the 29th Dáil.
The biggest change arising from the election has been the entry of the Green Party into government with Fianna Fáil, alongside the Progressive Democrats. There is some irony in the fact that the Greens were the fiercest critics of the Taoiseach on the issue of his personal finances - yet they ended up in office with him and proceeded to take a sudden vow of silence on the matter.
The opposite appears to be happening with Fine Gael and Labour who were both reluctant to make it a big issue during the general election campaign. Both parties are now lining up to put as much pressure as they can on Ahern as the ongoing slow motion exploration of his mysterious foreign currency dealings drags on at the Mahon tribunal.
Fianna Fáil TDs comfort themselves with the notion that a majority of the public has not shown itself to be deeply interested in the confused and complex story of Ahern's personal finances during the period when he was minister for finance back in 1993 and 1994. The key question though is whether Government Ministers and TDs will remain as sanguine if the saga drags on over the next year.
The problem facing the party is that members of the current Cabinet will inevitably become enmeshed in defending Ahern from his critics. They all rallied around loyally last October and again during the general election campaign to back him to the hilt. The difference now is that he has indicated publicly that he will be gone by the time of the next election.
That leaves senior Ministers with a decision to make on whether they should remain completely loyal to Ahern and stake their reputations on backing him, even though he will not be Taoiseach by the time the 30th Dáil has run its course. Those hoping to succeed to the post will have to decide how much political damage they are prepared to risk to themselves by continuing to back Ahern through thick and thin.
The Taoiseach's decision to anoint Brian Cowen as his successor was designed in part to ensure that the most powerful Minister in the Government would remain loyal come what may. Cowen is a party loyalist by instinct and conviction and was never likely to stir up trouble for the leader to promote his own long-term interests. However, some supporters of the Tánaiste might not have felt similarly constrained if their man had not been publicly endorsed by the Taoiseach.
For the present, Fianna Fáil TDs are happy to continue basking in the warm glow of election victory. The expansion in the number of junior ministers to 20 has helped to keep a significant section of the parliamentary party happy and when the lucrative committee chairs, vice- chairs and whips posts have been announced, the majority of party TDs will have been looked after.
The three smaller legs on the Government stool, the Greens, PDs and Independents, are also secure for the foreseeable future. The Greens have settled in to life as Fianna Fáil's junior partners with ease and appear intent on staying the course. The PDs are trying to establish if they have a viable future and they are certainly not going anywhere else, while the Independents who back the Government all have their seat belts securely fastened. The beauty of the arrangement from Fianna Fáil's point of view is that the Government can survive the loss of any one of its three supporting legs. That puts strict limits on the leverage that any of them can exercise over the senior party.
On the Opposition side of the House, the biggest change has been the emergence of Eamon Gilmore as the new Labour Party leader. He has a formidable task ahead of him in attempting to build morale in the party after an election result that came as a bitter disappointment, although it was by no means a disaster. He has wisely deployed the formidable talents of Pat Rabbitte and Ruairí Quinn in senior positions while bringing the three newly-elected TDs into the front rank of the party.
If he is to succeed where his two predecessors failed, and bring his party into government, Gilmore will have to make serious inroads in the commuter belt and persuade a large number of people who voted for Fianna Fáil to give their support to his party next time around. The likely arrival of tougher economic times ahead may help him but he will also need to re-motivate his party after the recent disappointment.
After winning an extra 20 seats, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has stayed on and picked himself up for another shot at the taoiseach's office. The big changes he has implemented in his frontbench team indicate that he intends to make a real fight of it, but there is a long hard slog ahead with no guarantees of success at the end against the most formidable political machine in any western democracy.
A lot will depend on two crucial developments in the years ahead. The first is the state of the economy and whether Fianna Fáil can deliver on its promise to the voters that their standard of living will be safe as long as the party is in power. The other is the identity of the next Fianna Fáil leader. Whether it is Brian Cowen or anybody else, the political dynamic will be very different. Whoever takes over will face an enormous challenge in matching the electoral achievements of Bertie Ahern.