It's no more than eight weeks since Drapier was noting the general consensus that health would be the dominant, if not the decisive, issue in the next election. The opinion polls said so, the focus groups backed them up, the local papers agreed and all the parties were making their plans accordingly.

Drapier made the point at the time that the issues everybody expects to dominate a general election rarely do. New issues arise out of nowhere, and in the current volatile climate that is more and more a certainty.

Moreover, when all parties concentrate on the same issue they tend to cancel each other out. Certainly it's hard for any one group to get a significant edge.

The Government clearly believes that health will be important as the extra £750 made available to M∅cheal Martin this week indicates, especially since all other Departments are being asked to tighten their belts. And it has yet to sink home to some just how much tightening will be expected of them.

Drapier does not deny that health should be and will be important, but he would not be so rash at this stage to predict it as the issue. The truth is the last few weeks have been both dismal and unbelieveable, the suddenness of calamitous events catching all by surprise, and when the dust settles will be seen to have huge consequences for the election, which conventional wisdom now sees in the second week of May.

The past two weeks have been the most depressing in the life of this Government.

No amount of talking up can disguise the extent of the job losses to date or calm the apprehension in face of further and clearly signalled losses.

Drapier thinks the Government has no option but to think and talk positive.

George Lee may be talking in terms of apocalypse now and deriding those who talk about a short sharp shock, the so called V-shaped recession, and George is not one to understate his case, but the Government must continue to talk in terms of Mary Harney's "half-full" model, otherwise all hell would break loose.

The nub of the problem, however, is that nobody actually knows what will happen, and more importantly nobody believes anybody who claims they know. The consequence of getting it wrong by taking decisions based on the wrong advice are so great that nobody in business is taking any decisions at present.

Everybody is waiting to see, with the result that plans for new investment, new technology, new recruitment are all on hold, and this in turn is creating its own lack of confidence and contributing to the sense of recession, if not to the actuality.

Few people believe - in Drapier's view wrongly - that the governments actually created the Celtic Tiger or had any real part in its creation. At the time there were many claims to paternity, but now that things are going wrong people tend to blame the Government, without having any clear idea as to what the Government could or should do.

Nor does the Government itself seem to know what should be done. Mary Harney pours cold water on further tax cuts, Charlie McCreevy makes belligerent noises and Bertie Ahern remains calm and reasonable. But there is no sense of them knowing any more about things than the average punter, and no sense of any contingency plans in place.

All of which adds to the uncertainty about how these current happenings will feed into the election campaign. The constituency polls tell us that Fianna Fβil will lose seats, and lose significantly, while the IMS and MRBI polls tell a much more positive tale. So which is it? Most people in here place more reliance on the constituency polls, but all polls ignore or more accurately cannot predict what may happen when the campaign starts. But if recent history is any guide then we have two possible models to go on.

The first such sees opinion remaining relatively static throughout the campaign.

People have already made up their minds, and very little the politicians or pundits say or do will change how they think and how they intend to vote. If that is so and we go by what the national polls tell us, Fianna Fβil will come back in the high 70s with Labour and Fine Gael doing no better than at present. And maybe even a little worse.

But if we go on the constituency polls then Fianna Fβil is in real trouble - losses in Tipp North, Kerry North, Dublin South West to start with, and no obvious gains. In such circumstances Fine Gael and Labour have only to make modest gains to be in government.

The second model is that the campaign does make a difference, and that there is a real swing; such as we had in 1977 when Jack Lynch swept in; 1981 when Garret FitzGerald brought Fine Gael to an all-time high; and 1987 which saw the PDs win 14 seats and of course the 1992 spring tide.

So far there is no sign of such a swing developing. But there rarely is advance warning or any clear indication of which way such a swing will go or who will be the main beneficiaries. But it's rarely the government of the day.

There are some who criticise Bertie Ahern for not going to the country earlier, blaming him for missing out on the feel-good factor and the benefits of the boom.

Maybe, but Drapier said more than once that the public was not in a particularly grateful mood, blaming the Government for traffic gridlock, housing prices, health failures, but giving it little credit for the successes. And Drapier said more than once that if Bertie had evidence to hand that Fianna Fβil would win an election he would not have hesitated. But he did not have any such evidence.

Now with the downturn how will it affect the electorate? One view is that the response will be one of anger, blaming the Government for blowing a great opportunity, creating expectations which are now unfulfilled, of squandering money on vanity projects and leaving important work undone, of lulling people into a sense of smugness, of having blown its own trumpet once too often.

If that indeed is the mood then Bertie Ahern will come back with the smallest Fianna Fβil party since 1927.

But there is the other view, that in time of crisis people want a sense of security, that the devil you know and all that, and Fianna Fβil will present itself as the best bet to see us through the crisis.

They will argue that it was not the Government which got it wrong, but external factors over which it had no control. If that is the reaction and if the public sees no viable alternative then the Government has a fighting chance of re-election.

Drapier is saying we are into the longest and most uncertain campaign in our history. The contest is wide open, and if Mary O'Rourke's performance in the Dβil this week is any guide it could be hot and personal.