A STRANGE contradiction hangs over the election due to be called today, at last. On the one hand, it will take place at a time when public confidence in politicians has never been at a lower ebb: the evidence and allegations at the Dunnes payments tribunal have shattered any remaining illusions about the purity and virtue of the political system. On the other hand, the government we are being asked to elect will be arguably the most powerful in the history of the State. Unlike many of its predecessors, it will be in a position to make real choices, and its decisions will shape the Ireland of a new millennium.

There is always, in politics, a gap between expectation and opportunity, between what we expect of our governments and what they can deliver. Just at the moment, the gap is in an unusual place. Normally, we expect much more than they can really achieve. Now, we expect much less.

We fail to notice that, however justified they may be, anger and scepticism can also let our political leaders off the hook. If they are all the same, if they are only in it for what they can get out if it, should we be surprised if they fail us?

For the fact is that in spite of the prevailing scepticism, whoever rules Ireland over the next five years will have unprecedented opportunities to effect real and lasting change. No Irish government will ever have come to power with such a favourable economic outlook ahead of it.

It will have a national debt that is under control and a virtually balanced current budget. It will find that, because of demographic changes, the huge pressure of young people coming on to the labour market for the first time will, during its third year in office, 2000, start to ease. And it will, if ESRI forecasts are correct, be able to rely on a continuing expansion of both the economy and the public revenues.

This does not, of course, mean that it will be able to sit back and just keep things ticking over. The new government will have to wean the economy off the soft diet of Brussels billions. Even if delayed beyond 1999, the single European currency will almost certainly come into effect during the lifetime of the next Dail.

It, too, will create uncertainties, especially if Britain stays out. And there will probably be some unpredicted economic shocks that may unsettle the apparently stately progress of the Irish economy.

BUT none of this should alter the fact that the next government will be able to do more than manage crises. What it does with the new wealth that is being created at such a startling rate will have a decisive influence on the shape of the new Ireland. An old society and its certainties have collapsed. The new one is still pliable and unformed. But over the next five years it will start to set and harden, so that it may hold that configuration for a very long time.

Will it be just another corner of the global economy, with a small elite of super rich, a large number of contented consumers and a hard core of surplus people, uneducated and unemployable, looking in balefully from the margins? Will the communities in which the 140,000 long term unemployed are concentrated continue to be left behind, so that the process of economic marginalisation that started almost 20 years ago be continued into another generation? And if so, will the first public building programme of the new millennium be the provision of more prisons?

All the major parties will present themselves to the electorate as safe managers of the economy. But we have a right to expect that a new government will be able to do much more than surf the waves of the economic boom. It will also have to turn the tide that has been running so strongly in the direction of a more unequal, fractious and divided society. If it doesn't it may find that it is facing what John Major had to face in Britain - a reasonably successful economy full of increasingly unhappy people.

Equally uncertain is the political shape of Ireland itself. The next five years could be genuinely epoch making. The new government will have to face both the continuing agonies of Northern Ireland and the beginnings of a broader shift in the historic relationship with Britain.

ONE way or another, an end game is being played and the coming months will tell whether it is the end of the peace process or the end of the conflict that is in prospect. Either way, the new government face an enormous task. If the Hume Adams process finally runs into the sand, the Irish government will have to rethink all of the assumptions of the last five years. And if there are real negotiations it will have to show courage, imagination and the kind of strategic intelligence that has so often been conspicuous only by its absence.

Both complementing and complicating that task will be the fact that relations between Ireland and Britain are also entering a period of change. That sonorous but often meaningless phrase "the totality of relationships on these islands may well take on a new significance. On the one hand, the single currency may well force the Republic into the most decisive declaration of in dependence since the foundation of the State the decision to choose Europe over Britain.

On the other, the Labour government's proposals for constitutional change may well begin to alter the nature of the United Kingdom itself. A government that has to cope with such contradictory problems will not be able to fall back on mere technocratic skills.

With such crucial issues to be faced, all the parties can make a good start by using the election campaign, not just to compete for power, but to restore public confidence in politics itself. Their task is not just to get into government, but to get there with a real mandate to shape an Ireland that accords with their visions of what it can become.

Without such a mandate, whoever comes to power will find themselves having to spend most of their time mollifying a disgruntled and fragmented public, with little left over for the big task of redefining Ireland's place in the world.

Unlike the last election, this one presents a clear choice of would be governments with, at least in some key areas, quite distinctive policies. There is no excuse for either of them to allow the campaign to descend into a round of photo opportunities, vacuous slogans and stylised abuse. Neither, when the election is over and a new government is formed, will there be any excuse for the rest of us to complain if our politicians manage merely to live down to our low expectations.