By Paddy Clancy

GENERAL election fever is in the air in Ireland. What the national papers are referring to as “a $4 billion war chest” — the predicted giveaway in the December budget — has fuelled belief that an election campaign is already underway.

Add on photographs of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern trying on a $150 pair of solid new shoes and belief becomes total conviction.

The image is of a government leader equipping himself for the miles of foot-slogging ahead in the door-to-door search for vital votes.

Exchequer returns released this week for government spending and revenue last month show the administration is flush with money - and ministers are collecting taxes faster than they can spend them.

The figures showing tax revenues in the first eight months of the year were almost $2 billion ahead of forecasts made in the budget last December. The expert prediction is that this paves the way for a $4 billion package of welfare giveaways and tax cuts in next December’s budget.

It’s a situation that fuels inevitable speculation that the government has no intention of staying put for its full term until the middle of 2007, and that an election will be called in Spring so the ruling administration may fully exploit a national mood of well-being.

Such is the atmosphere of boom and bloom that even the bankers are easing up on their customary cautious view of the economy. Pat McArdle, chief economist at the Ulster Bank, said, “There might be no government borrowing at all this year.”

The release of the upbeat figures coincided with a two-day “think-in” of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party in Westport, where Ahern’s purchase of the new shoes made the main evening television bulletins.

Although the gathering of the FF members of the Dail (Parliament) and the Senate (the Upper House of parliament) is an annual event, it had all the hallmarks of an early election rally this week.

Reportage of it was accompanied in many national newspapers of assessments of ministers’ performances in office and examination of the prospects of Ahern’s team chalking up a third successive election victory.

Ahern was in bullish mood at the conference. He told delegates the opposition parties would threaten the country’s hard-won economic prosperity if they got elected to government next year.

He launched one of his fiercest attacks yet on the main opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labor.

“The fundamental truth of the coming election is that prosperity itself will be on the ballot next year in Ireland,” Ahern said. “Empty words are no substitute for proven experience; politics is no substitute for real plans; promises are no substitute for performance.”

Ahern went on to accuse Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labor party boss Pat Rabbitte of failing to produce any policies or spending commitments. Yet they were acting as if they somehow had a right to be in government.

Main concern voiced by financial experts this week was that the government’s extraordinary tax-take was due largely to the construction industry boom and the housing market.

Up to a quarter of Gross Domestic Product, the standard measure of the economy’s annual output, now comes from construction-related activity. More than 250,000 people — more than one-eighth of the entire workforce — are directly employed in the construction sector, while thousands more jobs in the services sector are driven by its momentum.

More cautious elements of the business community assert that the government appears ill-prepared to deal with any crisis that would arise if the construction industry slowed down considerably or collapsed altogether.