EDUCATION, unlike taxation or crime, will almost certainly not be the subject of screaming headlines during this campaign. Unlike in Britain, the victorious party leaders will not sweep into power carrying a banner proclaiming "Education, Education, Education".
This is largely because all the parties and most of the people agree the Irish education system is basically sound. Although the Opposition parties would not admit it, it is also because the large increases in spending on education under the present Minister, Ms Breathnach, have led to significant improvements. She will be hoping in particular that middle class voters will remember her abolition of undergraduate fees.
But education will raise its head in two ways during this election: as a crucial means of addressing some of the deepening and unresolved social problems of Irish society, and as an issue of consuming local interest in particular areas.
The first concern is reflected in the almost unanimous way in which the parties (see below) have plumped for primary and preschool education as the sectors where they will concentrate their priority spending if they achieve power. Ireland comes near the bottom of most international league tables on primary education spending.
The INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, may be loud in his demands on behalf of primary education, but his analysis of what has happened to educational spending in the past three decades is echoed by most politicians and educationalists.
He says that in the 1970s, in the wake of the introduction of free secondary education, there was a need for considerable investment in second level schools as their pupil numbers expanded. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as the numbers of students at third level institutions soared, the spending focus turned to the colleges and universities.
Now, as politicians become increasingly concerned about the low achieving "under class" whose educational development is blighted at an early age, it is the turn of the primary schools. Senator O'Toole has been struck how leaders as ideologically different as Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney and Proinsias De Rossa agree about this.
"Social exclusion is likely to be - and should be - a key issue in this election," says the Professor of Education at Maynooth, Dr John Coolahan. "We must target the 15 to 20 per cent of children and young people who are not achieving through the education system.
"This underbelly of failure is very serious now, and it's going to get worse unless it's tackled this time round when we are in the unprecedented position of having the resources to do so."
If the next government does not put this at the top of its agenda, says Prof Coolahan, the vicious cycle of chronic unemployment, domestic breakdown, and the "self destructive culture" of dependency, drugs, vandalism and crime will lead to problems of society becoming destabilised by alienated and marginalised young people.
The Coalition parties were clearly conscious of this danger when they promised as one of their "goals" for the new century to ensure that every 12 year old should be able to read and write, and have a basic command of maths, science and computer skills, and every 17 year old should at least have the Junior Certificate.
They also pledged a surprising new commitment to adult literacy, an extremely under funded area compared to most EU states. This is an indication that politicians are beginning to take seriously the rhetoric about the need for "lifelong learning" they have imported from Europe.
The Opposition parties are equally worried about social exclusion. The Progressive Democrats' education spokeswoman, Ms Helen Keogh, warns against the "peril" of the "two tiered society" and says: "If we don't get it right at preschool and primary levels the rest of the education system will be built on sand."
Fianna Fail's spokesman, Mr Micheal Martin, says the 20,000 young people who leave school annually with no qualifications, or inadequate ones, are "the biggest educational challenge facing any government".
At a local level, politicians report that education remains the important issue it always is with Irish families. Senator O'Toole says he recently carried out a random survey of 700 NUI graduates to ask them what they thought were the key election issues.
When taken together the economy and employment came first, crime came second, and education came third, ahead of taxation, Europe, the environment and Northern Ireland.
In rural areas, in particular, Fianna Fail believes the issues of greatest concern are the underfunding of schools and the threat to the continued existence of smaller primary and secondary schools. Even politicians were surprised when 300 people turned up to a meeting in Tipperary last week organised jointly by the local INTO, primary school managers and the National Parents' Council to protest at underfunding.
It would be interesting to see how a Fianna Fail led government, with its rural regeneration election platform, would cope with the report of the Commission on School Accommodation, set up by the outgoing Government, and expected to recommend significant reductions in, and amalgamations of, smaller second level schools.
In Waterford and to a lesser extent in Cork the upgrading of the local regional technical colleges remains contentious, although Ms Breathnach's hurried acceptance of an expert committee's advice to upgrade all the RTCs may have drawn the sting from the issue in other college towns. Her decision to upgrade Waterford unilaterally in January was a self inflicted preelection headache Labour could have done without.
Politicians do not believe the Education Bill and its proposed regional education boards will be a topic of great interest on the doorsteps. Few voters will see the long overdue overhaul of a creaking education structure - whatever about the importance of the issue for an incoming government - as something which intimately touches their lives, or even those of their children.
Given the time of year, the over riding educational issue on thousands of families' minds will be how their children will survive and succeed in the upcoming Leaving Cert exam. That crucially important "rite of passage" will be of far greater concern than the educational policies of the procession of politicians on their doorstep.