Fine Gael has dropped plans to use a photograph of Tánaiste Michael McDowell in a major bill-board campaign targeting the Government, which will be introduced later today.
The poster campaign, which will cost in excess of €150,000, will use the slogan "Everything's Just Great!" in a bid to mock the Government's record on health and crime, seen as two key electoral issues.
The campaign is expected to use specific figures on key health and crime issues, such as the accident and emergency situation, gun crime and waiting lists.
The party had considered using the image of Mr McDowell on some of the posters, along with other Ministers, including Micheál Martin and Martin Cullen, and had released a mock-up of a potential anti-McDowell poster design to the media in the first week of January.
The poster design, which attracted considerable media attention, led to suggestions that Fine Gael was planning to use a negative campaigning strategy in the run-up to the general election.
Party leader Enda Kenny is expected to explain the decision not to use the posters on the basis that there is now no need to, since the party has gained considerable publicity already from them.
However, the party is expected to face claims that it dropped plans for the McDowell poster in the face of criticism of the tactic, and because the party could itself be branded as being too negative.
The negative campaigning technique, used widely in the US to varying degrees of success, involves personalised sustained attacks against political opponents.
However, it has not been a major feature in any recent election campaign, and many political strategists believe Irish voters are hostile to such techniques.
The Fine Gael poster campaign is being launched on the same day as a nationwide billboard campaign by the Progressive Democrats. They are the first in what is expected to be a series of pre-election publicity campaigns, meetings and conferences by most of the main parties in the country.
Spending on the pre-election campaigns are not included in the legal election spending limits, and expensive pre-election poster campaigns are becoming increasingly common in Irish elections.