The 2007 version of these two most recent successful Fianna F�il campaigns has yet to hit the public arena.

Indeed, Fianna F�il has been virtually absent from the national campaign which has been up and running for two months now. The high level of political activity from candidates in their respective constituencies has already declared this election under way. Last week, Labour's Joan Burton joked that she felt she was dating children's minister Brian Lenihan. The two political opponents have been bumping into each other two and sometimes three times each evening, several evenings a week, at events in their Dublin West constituency for months now.

Since early January, Fine Gael and Labour have been setting out their case to work together in the next government. The two parties have unveiled separate national billboard campaigns in recent weeks. Fine Gael has put the spotlight on Enda Kenny as the alternative taoiseach and attacked the government's record. Labour wants to know are you happy.

Meanwhile, Michael McDowell's Progressive Democrats have been jousting for media and public attention with an advertising campaign reminding voters of their successes in office over the past 10 years. All these parties, along with the Greens, have been making giveaway promises the likes of which have hardly been seen since the splurge election of 1977.

But, as all this has been going on, Fianna F�il has remained off the national playing pitch. Brian Cowen even grabbed the headlines late last month by criticising his competitors in the political marketplace for threatening economic prosperity "on the altar of short-term political opportunism".

Cowen's message will be repeated again and again in the coming weeks. The central plank of the forthcoming Fianna F�il campaign will be the need for fiscal prudence and the benefit of continued political stability. Despite the main opposition parties - and the PDs - making generous offers for voter support, there is a view in Fianna F�il that the public cannot be easily bought after a decade of prosperity.

But the party is not about to offer the electorate an austerity package.

"The troops will still have to have things to sell on the doorsteps. It can't all be about prudence and stability, " one senior party adviser admitted last week.

There is consensus in Fianna F�il circles that stability in itself is no guarantee of electoral success. In the run-up to the 1997 election, the outgoing Rainbow coalition targeted the stability of a potential Fianna Fail-PD government. Fine Gael under John Bruton ran a national advertising campaign showing a lighted PD match and a can of Fianna F�il petrol. Bruton returned to the opposition benches while the cocktail of Ahern and Mary Harney ended up in power.

Although the election is only weeks away, with a mid-May date expected, Fianna F�il is still not ready for the hustings.

Not all the party's candidates are in place. An option has yet to be taken on a national election headquarters. The visual and style guides for leaflets and posters were sent to candidates only last week. "All the check boxes have not been ticked off as early as they were the last time, " one seasoned party worker said this weekend.

The party's national executive meets this week with a report from Brian Cowen's influential constituencies committee on the agenda. It is expected that many loose ends will be cleared up at that meeting.

There will another three weeks of Fianna F�il silence until the party's election campaign is unofficially kicked off at its ardfheis on 24 March. In his Saturday night leader's speech, Bertie Ahern will reveal his party's taxation plans if given another five years in office. The following day, Fianna F�il will unveil its first billboards of Election 2007, with official candidate posters then popping up in constituencies around the country. This will signal the start of Fianna F�il's national spending on the general election.

A significant war chest has been accumulated for a sixto eight-week campaign leading into polling day. While party officials were tightlipped, several sources admitted that recent private opinion polls in key constituencies have produced good results.

There is a quiet confidence, and what concern there is is expressed about the strategy of the party's coalition partner.

The aggressive tactics pursued by Michael McDowell in recent weeks have left many in Fianna F�il uneasy about the type of campaign the PDs plan for the period before polling day.

Once again Ahern will be the main play for Fianna F�il.

With so much similarity between the main parties, the Fianna F�il campaign, like that of the other parties, will focus heavily on personality.

Remarkably, after 10 years as taoiseach, the Fianna F�il leader enters into his third election with high satisfaction ratings. He remains more popular than the party he leads.

Enda Kenny's satisfaction rating has remained low since last autumn but he is the most voter-friendly Fine Gael leader Ahern has faced. If Kenny's advisers can turn their man into a politician the voters believe can be a national leader, then Fianna F�il could get its first taste of trouble.

But until Ahern and his party join the fray, it's still impossible to say just how the general election campaign might unfold.