FOR A long time Fianna Fail has been confidently expecting a return to government this year. Now it is worried. Last December, it was looking across the Dail chamber at a government whose public satisfaction rating had fallen to its lowest point of just 39 per cent. The Lowry affair had damaged it, its constituent parties were suffering in the polls and a Fianna Fail return to government in the next 12 months looked odds on.

Now, four months later, the party looks anxiously across the chamber at a government whose satisfaction rating is at an all time high. Its postelection options for government have been narrowed alarmingly by the Labour leader, Mr Spring. If one which sees itself as the natural party of government cannot make up the numbers with the PDs, it is in deep trouble.

As the election approaches, the party awaits anxiously the deliberations of the tribunal of inquiry into the Dunnes Stores payments affair. This time it is not Mr Lowry who is expected to be in the political firing line but a former senior Fianna Fail politician who is alleged to have received over £1 million from Mr Ben Dunne.

Facing the prospect of political mud coming its way during an unpredictable election campaign, a 6 per cent opinion poll lead for the FF/PD option over the present coalition gives no cause for security.

Party sources paint a more optimistic picture. Mr Spring's rejection of coalition with Fianna Fail has at least rid the party machine of complacency and, they say, galvanised it through anti Labour sentiment. They hope to use the issue to portray Labour - some of whose seats they have targeted - as self interested people trying to save their seats through abandoning the national interest.

The sources also say the Dunnes payment tribunal will not necessarily be negative. A swift move to expel Mr You Know Who in the event of allegations of impropriety being proven may catapult Mr Ahern on to the high moral ground, they argue. "Don't expect Bertie to equivocate on this," says one party source. "His response will be rapid and unequivocal."

The weekend ardfheis is the springboard for Fianna Fail's general election campaign. Publicly, Mr Ahern will attempt to define his party as the credible, competent and efficient alternative to the three party coalition. Privately, the party strategists are attempting to sweep as many banana skins out of their path as they can.

Jolted by Mr Spring's rejection last weekend, Fianna Fail and the PDs have set up a mechanism to ensure each knows what the other is doing. They fell over each other on water charges in the past fortnight but got away with it; a similar policy muddle close to polling day could be disastrous. Each party sees an advantage in selling distinctive policy packages. They want to ensure that this does not lead to public contradiction within the alternative government.

IT is not a very happy situation for them. Fianna Fail objects angrily to its depiction as part of a "centre right" alternative government, but while it can quibble about the terminology, the reality is that Mr Spring has reduced its postelection options to just one.

Mr Spring has effectively told voters that a vote for Fianna Fail is a vote for a Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat government unless Fianna Fail achieves the dramatic and unlikely surge of support needed to form a single party majority government.

That unlikelihood is borne out by the recent Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll. A few weeks before an election is not the time a political party likes to see its support fall to its lowest point since November, 1994, but that is what has happened.

More importantly, the poll shows the party's Dublin share of the vote falling eight points since January to 36 per cent. The drop was particularly marked among the crucial, more volatile middle class vote that must be attracted by any party seeking a good election result. Such regional poll breakdowns must, however, be treated with caution, as they are subject to a margin of error of up to 6 per cent.

The results published this week of an Evening Herald/Lansdowne Market Research poll show Fianna Fail in Dublin at a much healthier 41 per cent. Fianna Fail sources say this tallies with their own private polls. Even if accurate, it almost certainly still leaves them short of an overall majority and therefore dependent on the PDs ability to get a reasonable result.

Fianna Fail, badly in need of a national swing to give it comfort, needs issues which would define it as a radical alternative to the rainbow government, but they appear nowhere to be found. Policy consensus on the economy and Northern Ireland mean the electorate will be offered different management styles and personnel, rather than competing visions of Ireland for the next century.

Even on personnel, the choice is not between black and white but differing shades of grey. The polarisation in image between Mr Ahern and Mr Bruton is nothing like as clear as that between Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald or Albert Reynolds and Dick Spring. Those past contrasts defined choices put to the electorate in a way that the present one will not.

On the economy, it is difficult to score points off a government in a time of economic boom. Fianna Fail will hammer away at the issue of public spending, but it will not be easy to get voters excited on the issue when the spending figures are still within the stringent Maastricht - convergence criteria.

They will promise cuts in personal tax rates, but so will the present government. They point to the fact that when in government they cut personal taxation rates by more than this government, but as tax rates continue on a slow downward drift and both sides promise more, it will be hard to define a radical divergence on this issue.

ON Northern Ireland, Fianna Fail will put itself forward as a co author of the IRA ceasefire in Northern Ireland, which ended shortly after Mr Bruton arrived in Government Buildings.

While the party will emphasise Mr Reynolds's sure handling of the run up to the IRA ceasefire, criticism of the Government will be tempered by the need not to seem too accommodating to a republican movement involved in armed actions.

Fianna Fail accuses Mr Bruton of not having pressed the British government hard enough to lift preconditions for Sinn Fein entry to the talks when the IRA ceasefire was in place. However, if the party was perceived as demanding too much flexibility in dealing with the republican movement, it could find itself badly exposed in the event of an IRA atrocity in the course of the election campaign.

Mr Ahern's criticisms of what it says is Government mishandling of the peace process will therefore be tempered in his speech tomorrow by strong criticism of the IRA and a demand for the Republican movement to choose between politics and violence. While criticising government management of the peace process, it is not an issue on which Fianna Fail can present a radically differing vision to the electorate.

When the likelihood of the PDs as a government partner is taken into account, the differences between government and opposition are further blurred.

Fianna Fail says it has a number of issues waiting to be stirred up during a campaign. One of these is hospital waiting lists which, it says, have drifted sharply upwards, unnoticed, in the past year. With the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, politically damaged by his handling of the hepatitis C scandal, Fianna Fail is keen to get at him on as many health issues as possible.

The troops will be roused at the weekend and positive coverage will probably emerge. There will be little time for Fianna Fail to bask in the afterglow of a successful ardfheis - the Dunnes payments tribunal begins hearing oral evidence on Monday morning.