Conventional wisdom these days would have you believe that, once they've been voted into office next week, all Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats have to do is to lie back and enjoy their popularity.
The Dáil's summer recess will do the rest: deputies of all shades, barring the odd newly-appointed minister, will join most of the electorate in a deep sleep; and hibernation will last until October.
But what if trade unions, employers, farmers and voluntary organisations refuse to join the big sleep?
Their commitment to social partnership is essential to the stability which is one of our selling points in the market for foreign investment.
What if other members of the European Union take a dim view of the progress we're making on Nice, despite the best efforts of Maurice Hayes and his colleagues in the National Forum on Europe?
We're supposed to make headway before the end of the year. But even with Brian Cowen's best efforts, the Government doesn't look as if it has the head for an ingenious formula, which would get us off the hook of neutrality, or the heart for a tough referendum from which it might emerge with credit.
Then there are the problems to be faced in the Dáil where it's often more difficult to take on an opposition which is itself divided into groups competing for attention than it is to resist a single opponent with the characteristics of a Government in exile.
What if the opposition parties in the Dáil and Seanad - and perhaps in local councils around the State - were no longer reliable followers of the sleep-walking example of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats?
Fianna Fáil's shrewd decision to opt for coalition with the PDs was partly a result of its experience with independents in the last Dáil: descriptions of independents' techniques by Jackie Healy-Rae and Tom Gildea would have brought a blush to the face of many an old-fashioned cattle-tangler.
Not only was coalition with the PDs ideologically preferable, it wrapped the FF leadership in a layer which protects it where it's most vulnerable - not only to independents but to attack by its own backbenchers.
This is in the area of public service cuts generally and health cuts in particular - the issues most likely to unite the opposition in the new Dáil which, as we shall see on Thursday, is more fragmented than any since the 1940s.
The opposition now is as diverse as the first Coalition was then. Fine Gael has had its worst defeat since 1948.
What it stands for is a subject to which it must give at least as much thought as to the issue of leadership, for which Richard Bruton is the most thoughtful and experienced candidate.
How the party and its new leader stand with the other opposition parties and groups is of more importance than usual, since Fine Gael can no longer claim the dominance it enjoyed when it had an overall majority in opposition.
Now, Labour, the Green Party and a newly formed group of independents are in competition; and once it has shed its paramilitary connection, Sinn Féin will no doubt seek to join in. For the moment, though, of the new arrivals the Green Party must claim most attention.
COINCIDENTALLY, John Quinn of RTÉ lately broadcast an Open Mind programme which seemed to fit the Greens' approach to economics, politics and culture. The subject was the political economist Paddy Lynch, a gifted lecturer, author of Investment in Education and once chairman of Aer Lingus.
Twenty-five years after publishing his report on education, he spoke of his disappointment that, for all the work of Donogh O'Malley and Paddy Hillery, it was still so difficult for the children of poor parents to secure a post-primary education.
"It's possible," said he, "that in English education under Thatcher there is less privilege." He paid tribute to the contribution made by public service broadcasting - British and Irish - to his own education and to the discussion of public affairs.
In the 1990s, Lynch was a member of the Tinakilly Senate, a gathering of elders who explored the theme "Renewing the spirit of Ireland" for which he prepared a paper of striking contemporary relevance: "Is economic growth enough?"
In it he quoted Bertrand Russell comparing technological change without the guidance of culture to an army of tanks that have lost their drivers and advanced "ruthlessly, without goal or purpose".
We were using non-renewable resources of fossil fuel, mineral deposits, coal, oil, gas and timber merely because voracious market forces demand them. The conventional reply to this was that a technological fix would see us through.
But this, he said, was a Faustian bargain: we shall sell our soul to satisfy immediate market needs, relying on "the nuclear option" to save posterity when fossil fuels were exhausted.
Some economists, meanwhile, were prepared to accept a haphazard free market, claiming that George Soros was "doing a certain amount of good" or that Russian mafia capitalism was "better than no capitalism at all".
Lynch, who scorned such excuses, was no opponent of growth or enterprise, but he was realistic. There was room for economic growth, he said, but it must be governed by human reason.
John Quinn's tribute to him was eloquent and timely.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie