STABILITY is at the heart of the matter. It's the prize the rival coalitions are competing for - on behalf of the people, of course. It has always been presented as the electorate's reward for making the right choice. In 1997 it's more important than in most elections, because now, more than ever, there is so much to lose.
And if parties invest time, funds and energy in attempts to prise their opponents apart, it's because they recognise the public's fear of instability, especially at a moment when many are beginning to enjoy the fruits of restraint.
The Coalition's critics began with the seeming certainty that the Government would be unstable. They forecast its collapse, first on the grounds of incompatibility, later because they thought a tripartite partnership too long-tailed to survive.
And when it failed to totter, let alone collapse, they took to complaining that the parties seemed to have been glued together. Which deprived of rich entertainment those who preferred a good giggle to good government.
Now, the opposition claim is that if the results of the election are too close for comfort, Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left will turn to the Green Party to keep them in office.
That would leave us with a four-party government and - who knows? - an Independent or two for ballast.
REVIVING an old joke, Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats talk about a 4 1/2-party administration. Let's turn the argument on its head. Suppose it's Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats that need a leg up.
Nothing much has been said in opposition quarters about Nora Bennis's discovery the other day that, at several points, FE's manifesto coincides with her own. A happy coincidence, she seemed to think.
It would allow her to support a Fianna Fail-led government, if the occasion arose. (The PDs, too, were coming along nicely, in Mrs Bennis's opinion; heading, she thought, in the right direction.)
Mrs Bennis, no doubt, had been listening to Bertie Ahern explain his party's position on abortion and the intricacies of the referendum-versus-legislation debate.
Who could blame her for coming to the conclusion that, with some of her own close neighbours on FF's advisory committee, she'd be sure of a sympathetic hearing there.
FF and the PDs pointedly speculate on the possibility of the Green Party joining the centre-left.
What could be more natural than to have the National Party, or even Sinn Fein, among the supporters - at a pinch, the partners - on the centre-right?
No one has so far come up with the piquant prospect of a column of centre-right deputies filing into the new Dail, with Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney at its head and Christy Burke and Nora Bennis bringing up the rear.
(At this point it's easy to imagine hands thrown up in horror, as hands shot up when FF and the PDs chose to share power in the first place. Or when FF and Labour went into business in 1992.)
For their part, Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left have spent most of the campaign trying to persuade Fianna Failers that they're being taken for a ride by the Progressive Democrats.
The PDs, they say, are wide boys who lost one of their closest allies when Michael Portillo bit the dust. And the survivor of the May Day massacre with whom they are most in tune is that scourge of layabouts and social misfits, Peter Lilley.
Their critics say the PDs would not only flog the family silver but smirk in the faces of old FF retainers on the way out. It wouldn't go down well with FF's supporters in the public service and semi-State companies.
To which at least some of Mr Ahern's friends reply that if Labour was so concerned for the welfare and feelings of FF supporters, it would not have turned down the opportunity to share power with the party.
But stability isn't simply a matter of having and holding power, or of forming convenient alliances because the parliamentary numbers or other political circumstances are right.
It depends on broad agreement between parties and trust and a refusal to be drawn to extremes, however ideologically satisfying it may be.
Ours is an economy which has benefited from a combination of private and public enterprise; and it's likely to remain a mixed economy. It serves a society which values the mixture and accepts the need for regulation in the interests of the community.
Stability depends not only on the maintenance of order but on a general acceptance that the balance in society is fair, not skewed in favour of some people, to the exclusion of others.
This is a central issue in the election and important in the long run in a way that's true of only one other, the question of Northern Ireland.
It's the issue which most clearly defines the differences between the competing coalitions and gives an importance well out of proportion to the party's size to the views being put forward by the Progressive Democrats.
When Mary Harney promised several months ago that her mission would be to help those who help themselves, few commentators recognised how that message would sound when it was more fully developed and applied to everyday experience.
IN THE course of this campaign, the PD message has become louder and clearer and, though Michael McDowell attempts to justify it by reference to Tony Blair, the stamp is undeniably that of Mr Lilley.
The emphasis on reduced tax rates for those whose incomes are many times the average wage, the concentration on cuts in public spending and the crude attacks on social welfare recipients - especially the most recent, on single mothers - mock the pretence that the PDs are intent on healing the divisions in Irish society.
The effect is bound to be the opposite: far from healing divisions, the PD policies will exacerbate them. The provenance of these ideas, down to and including the appeal to family values, is unmistakable.
And, with Fianna Fail committed to an equally crude policy it calls "zero tolerance", though its spokesmen seem to have problems about what exactly it means, the threat of instability appears from an unexpected direction.
The appeal of "zero tolerance", as with the attacks on welfare recipients, is that it can be sold as a quick fix when what's needed is imagination and careful planning for the long haul.
Much of this is accompanied by rhetoric about a presumed threat from the left. What seems to be forgotten is that people have had experience of a government of the centre-left. It's been in office for 2 1/2 years, during which stability has not been in question.