On election day itself, it is difficult to bring one's mind to write about an election the outcome of which is still indeterminate - despite being much forecasted. But it would be equally difficult to write about anything else,writes Garret Fitzgerald.
Much of what has happened during the election campaign has been more or less inevitable. Coming at the end of a period of extraordinarily rapid economic growth this contest was one in which the main government party had a built-in advantage, one that it was determined not to lose by making any foolish mistakes.
For their part, the Opposition parties clearly felt obliged to promise further goodies, although that was a process in which they were unlikely to win against the Fianna Fáil team playing on what one might described as their home ground.
True, there was an effort by the principal opposition party, Fine Gael, to switch the agenda away from material considerations by raising the deterioration in the quality of life that has been taking place in parallel with economic growth. But, perhaps because that party felt it necessary also to join in the goodies business as well as proposing some further tax reductions, the quality of life message failed to take off.
Fine Gael had also started at a disadvantage in that during the earlier months of the year the polls had been running against it, and during the campaign this clearly affected its credibility as a contender for government. It was good that all the parties felt it necessary to place their spending and taxation plans within a financial context based on independent projections of future growth. However, a side effect was that during the first 10 days of the campaign the electorate became first confused, and then bored, by apparently endless arguments about figures.
This was a process that probably helped Fianna Fáil. But what all parties chose to ignore, until Fine Gael raised the issue belatedly last weekend, was that all the parties' plans for the years ahead were based on the Fianna Fáil government's financial estimates for the out-turn of the current year. But that out-turn figure had been thoroughly discredited by virtue of the fact that at the end of April the current budget balance had already deteriorated drastically.
Had that been the main focus of the Opposition's attention - as it most certainly ought to have been - the way would then have been well prepared for a cumulative discrediting of the government month by month in the election run-up, as the current year's Exchequer figures inexorably foreshadowed a repeat performance of last year's budget disaster.
Rarely has any Opposition been given such an un-covenanted election bonus - one that could have been used to take much of the gloss off all the government's own plans for the future. At this point, one can only assume that the Opposition parties must have decided to pass up this opportunity in order to keep their hands free to promise more future spending - a process in which they were never likely to out-class Fianna Fáil.
In the election aftermath, the Labour leadership may justify their failure to develop any kind of anti-Fianna Fáil solidarity with other opposition parties by reference to the apparent weakness of Fine Gael. But that would make sense only on the basis that they never believed they would find themselves in government after the election - either with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. For Fianna Fáil would face the need to form a government with Labour only in the event that Fine Gael held its ground, thus preventing Fianna Fáil from gaining enough seats to form a government either on its own or together with a small party and with support from a few Independents.
However paradoxical it may appear, in this election Labour's best, and probably only, hope of being in government with Fianna Fáil - let alone with Fine Gael - lay with bolstering Fine Gael in order to ensure that Fianna Fáil would not gain enough seats from it to be able to do without Labour.
To have thus fought an election on a basis of not seriously planning to get into government reduced Labour's chances of maximising its seat gain, for in a general election a significant share of the electorate always hopes to influence by their votes the shape of the next government. That, after all, is what general elections are mainly about.
And, if those government-orientated voters do not see any prospect of a particular party being in government, they will cast their bread on other waters, or perhaps not bother to cast them at all.
Labour has a long-term strategy of replacing Fine Gael as the second-largest party. But that perfectly legitimate ambition would surely best be pursued by positive action to maximise Labour's representation in the Dáil rather than by negatively seeking to damage Fine Gael vis-à-vis Fianna Fáil, when this process will almost certainly also cost other Labour seats that it might have won from the government party.
One does not need to be a dyed-in-the-wool opponent of Fianna Fáil to feel that a situation in which that party could be more or less permanently in government may not be good for the country. But in any foreseeable future the only alternative to such a situation must involve a coalition of other parties, and to rule out such a coalition more or less indefinitely by abandoning the traditional co-operation between opposition parties was to do the country as well as Labour itself a disservice.
There are very few records, here or anywhere else, of governments performing well for periods of more than eight or 10 years. Alternation of parties in government is clearly desirable in a democracy, not at every election perhaps, but at least at every second one. And if, as seems likely, Fianna Fáil have yesterday been returned to government for a second five-year term, whether on their own or with others, one is entitled to wonder what kind of alternative may emerge to replace them in 2006 or 2007.
Since the two general elections of 1982, a proliferation of smaller parties and Independents has made the emergence of a coherent alternative to Fianna Fáil much more difficult, and this election may well turn out to have aggravated this problem.
Labour and Fine Gael both need now to think long and hard about how best to respond to this situation.
If they keep navel-gazing, pursuing what they see as their own individual agendas, they may do neither themselves nor the Irish democratic system any good.