The changing dynamic underlying the relationship between Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats has, as I wrote last week, completely altered the position as we face the general election.
The fact that the PDs in government this time tended to behave more as a junior partner than as the instrument of external forces which disapprove of Fianna Fail, has meant that the Anything But Fianna Fail Alliance (ABFFA) has, for the first time in a decade, lost control of the incumbent Government.
This has ominous implications for the electoral fortunes of the PDs, who as the creation of the ABFFA are now facing extinction on account of their betrayal of their natural heartland. After all, if the junior partner is not prepared to act in the prescribed manner, there is little point in electing a junior partner.
Since it is now virtually certain that no combination of parties excluding Fianna Fail will be able to achieve sufficient support to form a government, the next will, barring some kind of meltdown, include Fianna Fail. For the ABFFA, it is now a question of damage limitation. The obvious recourse is to turn back to the Labour Party. And yet, there is little hope that this option offers any better prospects.
Labour has already experienced the fickleness of the ABFFA, having been punished in 1997 for its temporary arrangement with Albert Reynolds. Certainly, as Labour's capacity for sanctimoniousness remains stupendous, there is a chance that in government it would behave differently from the PDs, creating a return to the political incontinence of the early 1990s.
However, the memory of the drubbing handed out to Labour in the 1997 election must give pause for thought. The public mood has changed since that time, and it is likely that, in the teeth of an encroaching recession following a sustained period of growth, the electorate would display even less appreciation for a party which played games with the prosperity or stability of the society.
This opens up the possibility that Labour under Ruairi Quinn would, in a future coalition with Fianna Fail, adopt a similar strategy to that pursued by the PDs under Mary Harney - cutting as good a deal as possible on the implementation of party policy and turning its back on the high moral ground.
Thus, there is no longer any reason for the ABFFA to believe that either the PDs or Labour will carry out its will in government with Fianna Fail. The only persuasive reasons, therefore, for choosing one or other party as a junior partner relate to policy issues, configuration and ideology.
But there is, from the ABFFA viewpoint, a new and unexpected danger in attempting to withhold from Fianna Fail the possibility of forming a single-party government. Since there is no guarantee that either the PDs or the Labour Party would act in accordance with the riding instructions of external sponsors, there is little incentive to gamble on achieving the right coalition formulation, given a new risk.
This risk is that any attempt to achieve the "correct" balance in respect of a Fianna Fail-led coalition might backfire and result in a coalition between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein.
Despite the efforts of the national media (the central element of the ABFFA), the continuing ceasefire ensures that Sinn Fein is now not merely "respectable" in the South but also increasingly electable, attracting greater support in Dublin than Labour, and likely to end up with more Dail seats than the PDs.
This means the ABFFA must factor into its calculations the possibility that, if it tinkers with the electoral will, the result may be a scenario even worse than Fianna Fail on its own.
It must be remembered that the ABFFA's primary objection to Fianna Fail relates to what we used to call The National Question. Although this has been obscured somewhat in recent times, both by the changing reality of the Northern issue and the strategic softening of Fianna Fail rhetoric, it remains the chief catalyst of hostility towards Fianna Fail.
In a sense, although the most visible surface narratives of Irish politics now focus on morality, ethics and ideology, the centrepiece of the belief that Fianna Fail is unfit for office relates to suspicions about its attitude to the historical relationship between Ireland and our nearest neighbour.
There is a belief that Fianna Fail, left to its own devices, would revert to type and resume behaving in a manner as to cause embarrassment in our relationship with civilisation.
How much greater would such a danger become as a result of a coalition between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein?
And so, even if there existed the possibility of cobbling together a rainbow ragbag which might exclude both Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein, there remains a risk that, in missing its mark, such an endeavour would result in precisely the outcome it was intended to avoid.
The only safe option, clearly, is to make a calculated effort to elect the second-worst scenario, the only option which is guaranteed to avoid the ABFFA's worst-case scenario: a single-party Fianna Fail administration.
And so, it is time for all right-thinking people to support Fianna Fail, for Dublin 4 to cling to nurse for fear of something worse.