PREDICTING the fall of a government is the ultimate mug's game. After all, it's 20 years ago next month since a defeat in the Dáil prompted the calling of a general election. On that occasion, Charlie Haughey used the excuse of a defeat on a private member's motion to go the country in a bid to win an overall majority.

Since then, practically every Dáil has gone its full term. The 27th Dáil, between 1992 and 1997, was dissolved a few months early and, of greater relevance, it did have two governments. In late 1994, the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition collapsed in the wake of the Brendan Smith affair, to be replaced – without any general election – by the Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left rainbow coalition.

However, the lessons learned from 1989 – not only did Haughey not get his overall majority, but Fianna Fáil lost seats and was forced to go into coalition with the PDs ? and the fall of the FF/Labour government have helped ensure that governments since have: A) avoided calling 'snap' elections and B) opted to hang together even in relatively trying times.

A glance back at newspapers in the first three years after Bertie Ahern was elected Taoiseach in 1997 will uncover countless confident predictions from commentators that the minority FF-PD government could not go its full term or that Ahern would go to the country, at the latest, in 2001. They were all proven utterly wrong as the government stuck together – despite a few dodgy moments – and Ahern actually did what he said he would do all along: wait until the Dáil ran its full term in 2002 before calling an election.

His second government with the PDs also ran for the full five years. All of this has left commentators distinctly reluctant to call time on a government.

Until now that is. The sheer scale of the economic crisis and the harshness of the medicine required to treat it, have dramatically reduced the odds on an early general election. It's one thing coalition partners managing to overcome their differences at a time of full unemployment and massive budget surpluses. It's another doing so in the teeth of the worst global recession in a century.

The challenge facing the government in 16 days' time is enormous. It will have to deliver what will probably be the harshest budget in the history of the state. The scale of the cutbacks and tax increases will make the pension levy for public servants and the withdrawal of the automatic medical card for pensioners look like child's play.

It is simply impossible to believe that within that budget there will not be at least one explosive grenade that is going to cause enormous grief for the various elements that make up the government.

The argument has been put forward that it is not in the interests of Fianna Fáil backbenchers, the Greens, or the government-supporting independents to have a a general election. That is certainly true. But that doesn't guarantee that there won't be one.

In the hothouse, claustrophobic atmosphere of the Dáil, events can quickly get out of control, forcing politicians into positions that they never envisaged taking and, with the benefit of hindsight, they will wish they hadn't. The classic example of this is the collapse of Albert Reynolds's FF/Labour administration. Is there anybody in the country who can explain why that coalition fell?

And sometimes measures can be just so painful that individual politicians will feel that they have no option but to vote against them, regardless of the electoral risk. The votes of independents Jim Kemmy and Seán 'Dublin Bay' Loftus against John Bruton's budget in 1982 ensured that the Fine Gael/Labour government collapsed, prompting a general election. Both men ended up losing their seats in the ensuing election and must have been aware, as they cast their votes against the budget, that this was a possible outcome. But each still did what he felt he had to do.

It's beyond question that the Greens have been rock-solid in government, showing commendable nerve and maturity. But this is completely new territory. Do they have the experience to spot the potential grenades in advance and head them off at the cabinet table? If not, the party could find itself swept along by a tide of public indignation to a point of no return. The smart money is that this won't happen, but it could.

The same holds for nervy FF backbenchers and for the highly experienced Michael Lowry and Jackie Healy-Rae. They will not want a general election. But it is possible that – like Kemmy and Loftus in '82 ? they will find themselves in a situation where, such is the magnitude of the pain being dispensed, they simply cannot live with what is being proposed.

What does seem clear is that, one way or another, 7 April will be the key date in determining the lifespan of this government. If it gets through it and delivers a package of measures that is well received by the international markets, and doesn't cause a revolution at home, then there is every possibility that this Dáil, like the previous three, will run its full course. But, as of now – given what the mini-budget is likely to contain ? that looks a big 'if'.

It would be a brave person who would say with certainty that the government will fall over April's budget. But, equally, it would a very unwise one to say with certainty that it won't.

scoleman@tribune.ie