There is a general election around the corner, and again we will be faced with selecting our leaders from a wide mix of hopefuls and no hopers, runners, also-rans, and never-should-have-run-inthe-first-places. Some of the faces will be familiar, while others will be new to the political field (although some of these new faces will be familiar through other walks of life, as the notion of the "personality" candidate gains ever more currency in Ireland). But, at the end of it all, there will probably be a large number of people out there who will feel that, if they had run for office, they might have made a better fist of the country that the politicians who were eventually elected.

Still, there are a number of reasons why people wouldn't run. For example, there are few careers quite as precarious as that of a politician . . .after all, would you accept a job that allowed a huge number of people who you had never met decide your fate every four years or so? And there is always the possibility of a misspent past catching up with you during your candidacy . . . most people have some dirty laundry, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily want it aired in public.

But Ireland has not, as yet, plumbed the depths of the personalised attack and mud-slinging that accompanies elections in the UK or the US, so this consideration is not such a strong one.

And, except for the public nature of success and failure in politics, there is practically no career that can influence real events as directly as can public office . . . so, for those people who have the stomach for the fight, the alure of politics can be very attractive.

But how do people get involved?

Unless you are a public figure who can be parachuted into an election to grab the high-profile spotlight, you will need to work your way up through a party hierarchy.

"If somebody phones up and tells us that they would, like to get involved, we would probably advise them to join one of our 1,200 branches around the country, " said Tom Curran, general secretary of Fine Gael. "But we always try to mind new members, and to this end, we try to have a New Members branch in every constituency, allowing them to develop the organisation together."

In terms of the career path (at least in Fine Gael), a person should first become an officer in a branch, before becoming involved in a constituency organisation. Each branch is a sort of club for like-minded people with its own infrastructure, and those involved will be involved in monitoring developments in their own area, letting the elected representatives know if there is something that they need to address. People could also get involved in survey canvassing, regarding the relevant issues in an area.

But working your way through the party infrastructure will not necessarily lead to candidature. For example, in Fine Gael, there are about 35,000 members.

But for the next general election, they will have only 91 candidates, meaning that you will have about a one-in384 chance of becoming one of those candidates.

Still, there are lies, damn lies and statistics, and if you feel that you have the right stuff, your chances of candidature could be considerably higher than the statistics suggest.

"We can often identify at an early stage if a person is a potential candidate, " said Curran. "So we can set up a mentoring programme for them, and advise them to run for local elections first, before moving on to a general election if they are suitable."

And what would make a person suitable?

"We are looking for people who have the ability to relate to people on the ground, " explained Curran. "We're looking for candidates who are steeped in the local community, and who are of their local community. There are cases whereby we may parachute a candidate in, but that is different . . . in those cases, we are bringing recognition to the table. But the majority of our candidates will have been actively involved in their communities."

Some will even be part of a political family. The idea of political dynasties is nothing new, and, indeed, should Hillary Clinton be elected President in America, and should she see out two terms, then America will have been ruled by two families for 28 years (and with Jeb Bush serving as Governor of Florida, there are others of the families who could have a viable stab at the top job in the future). Ireland has some of its own dynasties, but, according to Curran, being part of a political family is not necessarily and advantage.

"It can help, in that family members tend to know the organisation and the activists, and the former or current politician could be canvassing on your behalf.

But it can be a two-edged sword . . . people in the party may want something new, and there are numerous examples of family members being defeated. Instead, we try to go for a mix of gender, geography and generation in our constituencies, although in the real world, this is sometimes not possible."

In order to achieve this mix, some candidates will be drawn from the youth wing of the party, others will be high-profile constituency members (local professionals who have been campaigning on various issues, etc), while others still may have been parachuted in to add an extra dimension to the offering. But each will be engaged in exactly the same thing over the next few months . . . trying to get your number one vote, which will see them in a job at least for a little while.