THIS is an unusual election in many ways: likely to be the last of the century but the first in which an incoming government finds itself relatively free of overwhelming economic pressure.
It's the first election since the 1970s to have been contested by an outgoing coalition - and a tripartite coalition at that.
The first in which the choice was not just between parties but between well defined alternative administrations and their competing visions of a new Ireland in a new century.
The first with the distinctly European flavour of a contest between centre left and centre right. And the first in which, with agreement on all sides about the issues - the North, taxation, crime, unemployment and poverty, disagreement (on all but the North) is about how to deal with them.
Who wins in the end may well depend on the one in five, in an electorate of 2.7 million, who hadn't decided how to vote by the time the Dail was, dissolved this week.
But, with old loyalties playing a smaller role in successive elections and increasing uncertainty about the turnout it may fall below 65 per cent - the importance of the campaign is emphasised on all sides.
As yet, only the big issues are beginning to be clear. For example: who benefits - and who's meant to benefit - from proposed changes in the tax system?
It often takes days of analysis before budgetary details come to light, longer before it's discovered beyond yea or nay who stands to gain.
As a rule, it's the better off.
This, I suspect, is why the Government has chosen to concentrate on reducing tax takes rather than tax rates; and, coalition spokesmen may add, why their opponents stick to changing rates.
All sides have yet to be heard. But, to judge by the initial reactions of the analysts, the shared aim of securing middleclass support is not in doubt.
What is in doubt is whether redistribution is achieved as well. With both Government and Opposition parties due to contribute further to the debate in the next few days, we shall see.
In the meantime, one of the most bizarre contributions to the debate on crime was that of Fianna Fail's Willie O'Dea in conversation with Pat Kenny on Radio I this week.
Casual listeners must have waited for the screwy punch line as the two contemplated the possibility of sending criminals into the streets wearing placards identifying their crimes.
Or dyeing people's fore heads yellow for paedophiles, red for shoplifters, and so on. When Pat Kenny suggested chain gangs, Mr O'Dea modestly explained that he wasn't speaking for the party.
That didn't stop him suggesting that criminals might be brought face to face with their victims - an experience bound to terrify many if not most victims, to judge by accounts of the trauma they suffer in court.
BUT crime is an issue on which Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats expect to do well, dating - as they do - its emergence as a serious social problem from the moment the tripartite Coalition arrived in office.
This Year Zero approach is similarly applied to other problems - and with particular zeal by Brian Cowen to that of hepatitis C - which came to light during the Coalition's term in office.
Year Zero began on the day in 1994 on which Ruairi Quinn arrived in Albert Reynolds's office demanding a head.
From that day on, anything that could be pinned on the Coalition would be pinned on it - from the ramshackle state of the Department of Justice, achieved over decades, to the dreadful mistakes of the Blood Transfusion Services Board, made long before either Brendan Howlin or Michael Noonan was elected to the Dail.
Now, there is the additional risk that if there's a hung Dail - in other words, if FF and the PDs don't win - the Coalition will find itself beholden to others, such as the Greens, who are somehow unacceptable to Mary Harney and that master of the snakebite, Michael McDowell.
It's not the first time that politicians suggested that their government alone and unadulterated could meet the needs of the State. The only new feature of the claim for strong - and ideologically pure - government is that it's now made on behalf of a coalition.
The reduction of parties to three (or 2 1/2) was 4 feature of the 1960s. Twenty years earlier, the first inter party government included Fine Gael, two brands of Labour, farmers in one party (Clann na Talmhan), republicans and socialists in another (Clann na Poblachta), and Independents.
But if politicians and commentators preached the virtue of strong, single party government, it was a virtue seldom practised: Ireland has had four single party (Fianna Fail) governments with overall majorities since the second World War.
Two, in the 1940s and 1950s, survived in fair to middling style; the other two proved disastrous. One, elected in 1969, ran into the Arms Crisis within a year; the second romped home in 1977, with an historic majority and a crushingly expensive set of promises.
SINCE 1961, there have been four minority administrations and six coalitions. Sean Lemass, the Fianna Fail leader credited with laying the industrial foundations of the new Ireland, presided over two of the minority governments. And for him coalition was out of the question.
Fianna Fail considered its refusal to share power a core value, and coalitions an aberration - until necessity dictated partnership with the PDs in 1989. Now, its leader, Bertie Ahern, complains of Labour's decision to rule out coalition with Fianna Fail as undemocratic.
And far from being out of the question, all sides agree that coalition is certain to be the form of the next administration. The choice has been simplified by Labour's decision.
There are those who banker for the simplicities of the past, when we had three parties, two choices and what looked like a dismal future.
Of course, the state we're in is not what it used to be. For one thing, as some of our modern Boyle Roches might put it, our dismal future is a thing of the past. We've been enjoying the smartest growth rates in the European Union.
And, as the authors of the latest report from the Economic and Social Research Institute wrote: "The next decade will be a period of exceptionally rapid economic growth and improving living standards. the benefits of which can be widely shared."
The marks of a divided society are clear to anyone who cares to look within the State. Employers are trying to lure skilled migrants home, but some of the unskilled are still forced to go. Others are consigned to areas where hope has all but withered and criminals prey on the hopeless.
These are the problems - and the challenge - facing the politicians.