Normal, dull competent service resumed at Fine Gael campaign headquarters yesterday after opening-day wobbles.

The pressure was on Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the party hierarchy for the launch of their “long-term economic plan”, the key plank of Fine Gael’s re-election effort.

Recent weeks have seen the Fine Gael election strategy called into question as it seemed the party wanted to be all things to all men, promising tax cuts while also committing to largesse in public spending.

In recent times, the party has adopted an approach of trailing snippets of its general election manifesto and strategies to set the agenda for the run-in to the campaign.

To a large extent, it worked. When the party revealed its policy on the working family payment – which will see the wages of low-paid workers topped up to a €11.75 an hour – many accused it of trying to steal the Labour Party's clothes.

Fine Gael’s plan, however, while designed to “make work pay”, as the party puts it, also sought to spare business owners having to pay the full “living wage” of €11.50 an hour.

Either way, the Fine Gael policy got talked about, even if it was in the context of trying to partly steal the clothes from its Coalition partners.

Recent weeks have seen Fine Gael perhaps go slightly too far in its piecemeal teasing of its “long-term economic plan”. The emphasis before Christmas was on tax cuts, before last month’s ardfheis saw a pivot towards increased spending.

Michael Noonan outlined his contingency, or “rainy day”, fund, without placing it in the wider context of the resources available to the next government, the “fiscal space”.

Party sources stressed an overarching plan would come, but time spent questioning its figures and underlying assumptions did some damage to Fine Gael's economic competency pitch. It allowed the sight – novel, to say the least – of Sinn Féin accusing Fine Gael of using dodgy figures, while Fianna Fáil accused it of being profligate. Labour also muttered that its Government partners were making things up as they went along and only Labour was the economically responsible party. Matters were not helped by the opening press conference of the Fine Gael campaign this week, which saw Kenny stumble over questions on economic policy before deferring to Noonan.

After yesterday’s long-term economic plan was published, even some in Fianna Fáil privately acknowledged that its overall assumptions were correct, while quibbling with some detail, such as the €250 million in tax that could be brought in through increased compliance.

After laying out the plan yesterday, Noonan then went on the political attack and said, yet again, that Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin would go into government together – despite the vehement protestations to the contrary from both parties.

He claimed Fianna Fáil had no policies and would allow Sinn Féin thinking to dominate such a government, before going on to ridicule Gerry Adams’s previous infatuation with Syriza.

Just as well, then, that Fine Gael’s long-term economic plan launch went smoothly – otherwise jibes about Greek flags being handed out as “spot prizes at Sinn Féin dances” wouldn’t have been so funny.