Most commentators seem to take it for granted that, however vulnerable it may be on sleaze, when it comes to the economy the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat coalition stands secure.
Now that Michael Noonan has become leader of Fine Gael, and there's a nip of competition with Labour in the air, the main opposition parties are set to challenge this assumption by opening a new front on a broader battleground.
It might not amount to an electoral pact or promise of coalition but co-operation, especially on social democratic lines, in the Dail and Seanad would make their opposition more coherent.
Both Mr Noonan and his deputy leader, Jim Mitchell, struck a social democratic note after yesterday's election. On the vexed question of corporate funding, as well as their renewed emphasis on a just society, they showed a willingness to move closer to Labour positions.
Fearing Fine Gael complacency, Labour's deputy leader Brendan Howlin had already issued a reminder in The Irish Times that the 60 per cent of voters who do not support FF are divided three ways: roughly 20 per cent each supporting FG, the biggest single opposition party; Labour and the Green Party; and smaller groups and Independents.
Mr Howlin set out the claims of Labour and Ruairi Quinn while Mr Quinn himself took on both the coalition and its allies in scepticism on the European front - an opportunity was presented by Charlie McCreevy's bawling at Brussels as if he were on a lorry outside chapel gates.
Mr Noonan and Mr Quinn are formidable performers with considerable experience in economic and financial affairs, though both have been criticised in this Dail for failing to exploit more profitably the exposure of Fianna Fail's greasy past and current blunders.
BUT parties cannot rely on their leaders alone to take hold of the popular imagination. When Garret FitzGerald became Taoiseach in the 1980s the time was right, not only to mark the contrast with Charles Haughey, but to inspire and lead a constitutional crusade. The country was in a mood for change on social issues, on the national question and on European affairs.
But if the time was right for social change in the early 1980s, what are the challenges for a much more disparate group in opposition now? Sleaze, of course, is one. And some of the work begun on socio-sexual issues in the 1970s remains to be completed.
The biggest challenge, however, must be to restore some sense of balance to a society which has become so lop-sided it's hardly recognisable as a community.
A few weeks ago, when the media were busy chasing Liam Lawlor - to see him leave Mountjoy - two other images of ourselves were all but missed in the excitement. One, ironically, featured the governor of Mountjoy, John Lonergan, explaining yet again how most of those who came his way are destined for prison as surely as those of another class inherit their wealth and privilege.
The second image was provided by Prime Time's report on St Teresa's Gardens and the account of cause and consequence in an interview with Father Sean Healy of CORI which followed. The subject of both Mr Lonergan and Father Healy was class.
Thirty years ago, when some brave souls set out to lead us towards social change, people in polite society didn't talk about sex. Nowadays, they don't talk about class. The hope is the same: if they keep their heads down and their mouths shut the bogeyman will go away.
The point was well made in a paper presented by Prof Kathleen Lynch to the 10th anniversary conference of the equality studies centre at UCD last year. In a section called "A Censorship of Dissent" she noted how "remarkably little public debate [there is] about the extent and nature of social inequality in our society".
"Political parties," she said, "seem to be increasingly focused on their own survival, often with very little mention of the values or principles which underpin their politics. It has become increasingly politically fashionable to claim that one has no politics at all."
The conference was held in mid-December. This passage might well have been a comment on the leadership election. Indeed, she refers to one senior member of an unnamed party who said its politics was to get into power.
Partnership had undeniable benefits but reinforced consensual politics, "Real division of interests between workers and employers, between rich and poor, between women and men, have been suppressed. There has been a neutralisation of public discourse and debate. A language of sameness prevails," said Prof Lynch.
Isn't it ironic that of those already responding to the challenge posed by Prof Lynch, one is a prison governor and the other a priest?
dwalsh@irish-times.ie