the audience will be whatever people from each constituency listen to RTE Radio and the obsessed psephologists whose discussions of voting makes every election a true pleasure and a celebration of proportional representation.

But what I'm relying on is that I myself am beginning to notice what the politicians are saying.

Not that I'm ready yet to scrutinise the detail of their promises. At the moment, I'm just marshalling preliminary thoughts, the first of which is that Bertie Ahern and his cabinet, take them all in all, are competent and experienced managers of Ireland and it's no use the opposition claiming that they've made a balls of government, because we can see for ourselves that that isn't so. There's been a deal of reform in the last number of years. They've been lucky with the money, of course, and probably a man on a bicycle with a paper bag over his head could have made some kind of fist of running Ireland in recent times. Nevertheless, there are strong, seasoned people in the present government and some outstanding ones, Mary Harney being the obvious example. When you compare them to the secondraters of the Haughey era . . . preferred, in many cases, precisely because they didn't have the brains or the character to cause any trouble for the Boss and his cronies . . . the present lot are Olympians.

The Fine Gael/Labour opposition may have very good potential ministers in their ranks. But the best of them have been out of power for so long that they'll have an awful lot of learning to do. On our dime.

The rest will be an unknown lot.

This itself, of course, is an argument against voting Fianna Fail back in. One-party government enfeebles a democracy because no one else gets any experience.

Things are good, these days, except for the citizens born, in our system, to lose, and never to fulfil the promise they had when as infants they didn't know what postal district they came from or where the nearest pusher was. The economic outlook seems generally good and Northern Ireland is quiet, apart from the usual malice, doubledealing, negativism and wasted lives. So we could afford to take a chance. The civil service would keep things ticking over while a new lot of politicians learn the ropes.

The temptation to give Fianna Fail an enforced rest from government . . . for their own good . . . was greatly increased by the arrogance of the Haughey rump at the recent Humbert Summer School. I personally don't think P Flynn should be being celebrated, much less P Flynn be celebrated for celebrating Haughey. How far, I wonder, would the same Flynn have gone if his leader had happened to be, say, Garret FitzGerald, or say, Jack Lynch? I don't doubt that Flynn is a clever man, and of course his personal manner, such as his habit of referring to himself in the third person, is as unforgettable as his appearance.

But men like him are propped up throughout their careers by secretaries, briefers, henchmen and fellow local gurus such as, in his case, his daughter. It is difficult to disentangle what qualities he himself might possess as opposed to seem to possess in the lucrative and well-staffed posts with which his party rewarded him forf Well, for what?

I thought the caption to The Irish Times photo of Flynn with the school's organisers should have read 'We haven't gone away, you know'. It, and the famed builders' tent at Galway Races are enough to make me think that Fianna Fail should be put out of power until they face certain realities. One is that what was robbed from Ireland during the Haughey era by way of bribes and unpaid taxes was other people's life chances. Haughey was indeed a brilliant and innovatory legislator and a wonderfully complex man. But he and his favourites and the supine party that facilitated them robbed their fellow citizens . . . by legitimising tax evasion . . . of educational and health and employment and housing opportunities, and they robbed even the fortunate of pride in this country.

Another reality is that it is widely believed that the ridiculous price of houses here is due to Fianna Fail's unwillingness to alienate the property developers and builders who they, in return for support of all kinds, have made very rich. Inviting this new oligarchy to a champagne fiesta with the party bigwigs seems to me very, very bad PR. Fianna Fail must want the developers' money more than they want the approval of middle-of-theroaders like myself.

Unfortunately, no amount of Fianna Fail shooting itself in the foot can make the other lot look better than they are. This week's Big Groan Prize for an utterly fatuous election promise goes to Eamonn Gilmore of Labour.

He is quoted as saying that in government "his party would ensure that people in full employment can buy their own home reasonably near work or extended family". I look forward to finding out how Labour plans to eliminate commuting. And what's he going to do with people in part-time employment?

Keep them in camps? Well, batten down the hatches. There's lots more idiocy to come.