Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party spent the week preparing for a general election which most commentators expect Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats to win.
But, not for the first time when they seemed well ahead, FF and the PDs spent the week on the run, with the heroes of the abortion referendum, Bertie Ahern and Michael McDowell, ducking and diving for cover.
The Government's latest difficulties started with what looked like a simple case of cornercutting on the award of contracts and Stadium Ireland.
But Ahern's pet project became yet again a force of division in the Coalition, a source of embarrassment outside it and, according to Michael Noonan and some members of the Public Accounts Committee, a scandal calling for full disclosure and explanation.
McDowell, as Attorney General, was given the job of reporting on the affair to the Government. And on his return from Los Angeles, where he spent the holiday weekend, he boasted publicly that his report would be worth reading.
But at the time of writing it has yet to be published or to find its way into the hands of the Public Accounts Committee; and Ahern seems content to allow the former civil servant Paddy Teahon, now chairman and chief executive of Campus Stadium Ireland, to take responsibility for what happened.
Teahon has acknowledged the corner-cutting in the case of a shelf company awarded a contract at the Aquatic Centre but denies that any dishonesty was involved.
It was, however, the disclosure of a separate 30-year services contract which caused Pat Rabbitte and other members of the PAC most concern and led Des O'Malley to describe its terms as extraordinarily imprudent: he called for its termination.
The confusion is familiar. So is the impression that Ahern is hoping to get to the Easter recess without having to answer questions in the Dáil.
By comparison, Noonan and Jim Mitchell were models of sobriety when they produced the framework of Fine Gael's economic policy under the banner "Just Economics" at a press conference on Tuesday.
They clearly believe they will be accused of recklessness - high taxes and higher spending - at the mere whiff of a centre-left coalition. So they've come up with a set of proposals that are as cautious as if the party was already in office.
There would be no increases - and only limited reductions - in income tax. Nor would there be increases in corporate or capital taxes. As for current spending, FG had a formula which wouldn't frighten the horses: an annual increase at the level of growth (around 5 per cent) plus inflation, plus 2 per cent.
This, they say, would amount to 10 per cent next year - or little more than half the rate achieved this year by the spendthrifts of FF and the PDs, an outcome cheered by Moore McDowell and other gurus of the right.
How it will go down with Labour delegates at their conference in Dún Laoghaire today is another - more important - matter. More important, that is, as the parties prepare for the election; a process which for the Opposition, probably means setting terms for an alternative to the centre-right coalition.
Those who claim the result of the election is a foregone conclusion base their assumption at least partly on the presumed inability of the Opposition to build an alternative.
Do Fine Gael, Labour, the Green Party and left-leaning Independents now have the same determination to take and hold power as the Fianna Fáil forces have demonstrated during the last 4½ years?
The polls suggest the electorate doesn't think so. But the electorate hasn't been presented with an alternative, though the issues are clear and the failure of FF and the PDs to do more than ask for extra time to deal with them is undeniable.
The health services are at the top of every list in every poll in which the citizens are asked about issues. And "health services" is shorthand for a wider group of related issues: welfare, childcare, care of the elderly and provision for people with disabilities.
Indeed, if the issues in the election were to be reduced to the simplest terms, it would be between those who demand that public services come first, as Labour does and their critics who ask: how much and who pays? Fine Gael claims that it is possible to improve public services and eliminate poverty without increasing taxes, though the party accepts that it may be necessary to borrow.
Labour leaders are likely to point out this weekend that, in any event, movement on taxes is limited: an agreement inside the European Union governs the pace of increases in corporation tax; the party itself is opposed to increasing income tax.
But Labour is bound to make it clear to potential partners - and the electorate - that the failure to seize opportunities with which 10 years of prosperity presented us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven. We didn't build a society which lived up to our rhetorical aspirations while the good times rolled. Labour itself would not be forgiven either for joining FF who signally failed that task or for accepting an unduly cautious deal with FG.
The party might well argue that the best of all options would be to put the question directly to the electorate: is it serious about improving health and other services, and is it prepared for a modest tax increase to pay for them?