This Dail has accomplished two-thirds of its potential life, and it may not run its full course. Few of our parliaments have. It is thus natural that speculation should begin about the form the next government may take. I am not sure, however, that this speculation has yet taken on board the scale of the problem that may face the five political parties which have the constitutional capacity to form a government after the next election.
Recent polls have suggested that Independent and Sinn Fein candidates could be elected in numbers that, taken together, would make difficult the emergence of any Coalition that would enjoy a majority within the Dail - or even the emergence of what might be described as one with a "near-majority".
The first striking feature of the most recent MRBI poll in The Irish Times is that more than 25 per cent of those questioned were not prepared to say whether or for whom they would vote.
That represents a very high figure for what might be described as "browned-off" voters. In the last MRBI polls before the 1997 general election the proportion who took that position was only 14 per cent - a figure that on election day turned into a 35 per cent abstention rate. How many abstentions can we expect at the next election?
A second point arising from these recent polls is that, in the absence of any clear indication of what kind of government a vote for various established parties is likely to produce, a higher than normal proportion of votes cast will go elsewhere - to Independents or Sinn Fein.
It needs to be said that polls consistently under-estimate the number of votes cast for Independents - partly because in advance of an election voters cannot know what Independents are standing.
Thus in 1992, just under 3 per cent said in the last pre-election poll that they would vote for independents - with which Sinn Fein was then grouped -but the proportion who did turned out to be 8.5 per cent - almost three times greater.
In the 1997 election, when Sinn Fein was separately identified, the proportion of those stating a voting intention who said in the immediate pre-election poll they would vote for what might be described as "pure independents" was 6 per cent. But 10 per cent used their votes that way.
When a poll was taken by MRBI last June, in the immediate aftermath of the O'Flaherty affair, a phenomenal 12.5 per cent of those who stated a voting intention declared they would vote for Independent candidates - a figure which, if an election had been held at that time, could on past form have given such candidates as much as a 20 per cent share of the vote - twice the 1997 figure.
However, it seems that during the summer anti-party feelings cooled somewhat. By mid-September around half of those who had been thinking of protesting by voting for Independent candidates had simply switched off and seem to have opted for abstention.
At this stage we cannot judge how many of these disillusioned voters will at the next election remain content to abstain, or will instead decide to renew their intention of last June by casting their votes for Independents. Much will depend on how many candidates present themselves as Independents and how many have the capacity to attract a significant vote, either by standing on local issues, or by adopting an anti-establishment stance.
All one can say is that at this stage it would be foolish for the political parties to write off the threat from Independents, Of course traditionally most votes for Independents are wasted in the sense that, because only a small proportion of Independent candidates secure enough votes to remain in contention for seats at the end of a constituency count, the proportion elected to the Dail is usually less than half the proportion of votes cast for such candidates.
If, however, in the next election the share of votes going to Independents was to rise significantly, the ratio of successful candidates to votes cast for such candidates might be higher. In 1997 there were five Independent candidates who missed election by margins it would not take much to erode.
Thus in the absence of anything happening to damp down the present anti-party mood among the electorate, the next Dail could easily contain up to a dozen Independents. But that is not the whole of the problem faced by our five established political parties.
It is evident that, despite its link with what is still an un-decommissioned IRA, Sinn Fein has secured increased support from a section of our electorate. In the Dail elections of the past dozen years that party's vote rose from 1.25 per cent in 1989 to 1.65 per cent in 1992, and to 3.5 per cent in 1997. But, given that, in contrast to 1992, Sinn Fein put forward candidates in only 12 constituencies in the last general election, that 3.5 per cent vote represented support at least three times greater than the 1.4 per cent that had been indicated in the 1997 pre-election polls.
This under-statement of the Sinn Fein vote in polls is probably a less significant factor today than three years ago, but it would be wise to assume that their showing of 3.3 4 per cent in recent MRBI polls remains an under-statement of its strength, which could reach, or exceed, 6 per cent.
Support on that scale nationally would offer Sinn Fein a possibility of gains in the five four-seat constituencies where they secured between 79 per cent of the vote three years ago - as well as in the North Kerry three-seater, where their candidate won 16 per cent of the votes.
Even if Sinn Fein was to win only three or four of these seats, then, together with up to a dozen independents, as many as one-tenth of all Dail seats would be held by candidates who could not be members of whatever coalition might be formed after the election.
Arithmetically this would mean that, to secure a Dail majority, a coalition needing the support of 83 seats, would have to win at least 55 per cent of the number of seats secured by all five constitutional parties. On present form such an outcome does not seem easily achievable either by Fianna Fail, or by the three opposition parties. This could change - if a coherent alliance of parties were to present itself to the electorate.
For we know that at general elections - as distinct from any other type of election - what the electorate seeks, and is prepared to vote for, is a party or combination of parties they see as having a prospect of securing a majority. The absence of such a prospect has undoubtedly contributed to the steady decline in electoral participation from 73 per cent in 1987 to 65 per cent 10 years later.
If, as is now the case, no such alternative is offered, we are likely to see a badly hung Dail emerge after the next general election - one that could yield correspondingly weak government during the first half of the current decade.
Are the constitutional parties prepared to draw logical conclusions from the situation staring them in the face - or are they content to allow our politics to drift into something like incoherence?
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie