Take the PDs, beset with difficulties despite still being represented at the cabinet table. Reduced to just two D�il seats, the party's future looks ominously bad. One of those TDs, Mary Harney, will almost certainly not contest the next general election and has made it clear she does not want to remain in the role of party leader. Many of its key figures are gone from public life - Liz O'Donnell, Michael McDowell, Tim O'Malley.

Tom Parlon looks the most likely leader but he must be wondering whether he will be taking on mission impossible.

The PDs have shaped policy in Irish politics for the past 20 years but that agenda has gone and radical reinvention of the party is required if it is to survive.

Whether or not the will or the appetite is there to do this must be a serious doubt at this stage. It's two years until the next local and Euro elections. If the party repeats its May electoral performance, the game is up - it's as simple as that.

Hard choices will need to be made over the next few months, followed by a lot of hard work in the following two years if that scenario is to be avoided.

But while the PDs' dire performance has been in the spotlight, both Labour and Sinn F�in also have much to think over before the D�il resumes. Yet again in a general election, despite a different electoral strategy, Labour has simply treaded water and ended up back on the opposition benches, quite possibly for another souldestroying five years.

The party has three new TDs and while this means there are once again parliamentary party members under the age of 50, their presence won't do a huge amount to reduce the high average age. Assuming the D�il runs its full course, just short of half of the party's 20 TDs will be 65 or older by the time of the next general election. The party's failure five weeks ago to retain the seats held by the retiring S�amus Pattison and Se�n Ryan is a significant worry in that regard.

Like the PDs, Labour has struggled to define what it stands for. In the past two general elections, the party has fought two well-run and imaginative campaigns but the Irish public seems to have barely noticed. The Frank Luntz Week in Politics programmes showed Rabbitte getting rave reviews from voters but, again, no dice when it came to polling day. It's hard to know where Labour goes from here.

Hard left politics have little attraction for the Irish electorate. Blair's model worked wonders for Labour in Britain but there the party, in targeting middle England, could afford to take the workingclass vote for granted. In Ireland, Fianna F�il hoovers up that vote.

In terms of electoral strategy, Labour seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place. If it goes into an electoral pact with Fine Gael, it benefits the larger party (effectively resuscitating Fine Gael from its intensive-care bed post-2002); if it doesn't, it allows Fianna F�il a free run.

There has been grumbling against Pat Rabbitte within Labour but, in a party that doesn't seem particularly united, there is no logical successor to him that could attract the necessary suport. The only real consolation is that the party has been written off many times since the foundation of the state and has always proven its durability.

But this is a worrying time for Labour.

As it is for Sinn F�in. Its current predicament is summed up by its increasingly desperate attempts to secure D�il speaking rights given that it falls well short of the seven TDs required to secure them. The party that was at one point being tipped in some quarters to win up to 16 seats in the D�il ended up losing one of its TDs and adding none to finish with just four deputies.

Given likely boundary changes next year, only Caoimhgh�n � Caol�in and Arthur Morgan look safe in any future election. The failure of Mary Lou McDonald, to win a seat in Dublin Central was disastrous for the party.

Likewise, the inability to win even one of the party's other four 'bankers' - Donegal Southwest, Donegal Northeast, Dublin Northwest and Dublin Northeast. It seems fairly clear the party's Northern leadership was a liability for Sinn F�in in the general election - never more so than in Gerry Adams' disastrous performance in the smaller parties' leaders debate. It must be unlikely that Sinn F�in will face into another general election without a recognised leader in the south. But the obvious contender for that role, McDonald, suffered a serious setback in May's election.

The party deserves credit for its central role in resolving the Troubles in the North.

But the irony is that, with the North now largely out of the equation, the question is now being asked; what is Sinn F�in's attraction? What do they stand for?

There have been comparisons between Sinn Fein now and the last days of the Workers' Party but that underestimates the resources - financial and human - that the former still has at its disposal.

However, there are no easy answers to Sinn F�in's current problems. Undoubtedly, its biggest problem is that it has discovered the hard way that, in Fianna F�il, it is dealing with an infinitely more formidable opponent than the SDLP party it so assidiously reeled in and overtook in the North. Then again, it's far from being alone in that regard.