The full line-up of candidates for next May's election will not be finalised until some 10 days before polling. However, the political parties have selected their candidates earlier than ever and it is therefore possible to discern some characteristics and trends.
Any examination of this nature at this stage must come with a number of caveats. Some of the parties have yet to finalise their tickets in a handful of constituencies and some have left the final national level ratification of locally selected candidates until the Dáil is actually dissolved.
More significantly at this stage there are limitations to the capacity to ascertain the identity and potential impact of most of the Independent or non-party candidates. Some have not yet declared an intention to run and, even where they have done so, it takes some time for the details of Independents to percolate to those of us trying to track the contest in various constituencies from a distance.
Somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of all the candidates who stood in recent elections have been Independent candidates. Although more Independent deputies were elected in 2002 than ever before, most of the Independent candidates have very little impact on the outcomes in their constituencies - indeed, the majority would have "lost their deposit" if a deposit was still required.
Leaving those Independents aside, the following are the most striking aspects of the 350 candidates already in the field for the political parties, namely, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, Green Party, Progressive Democrats, Sinn Féin and the Socialist Party.
Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the candidates are male. Of the 350 candidates already selected by the political parties, only 52 of them are female - which means that more than 85 per cent of the candidates are men.
There are differences across the parties. Only 12 per cent of the Fianna Fáil candidates are female compared to almost a quarter of the Progressive Democrats candidates. The other parties come in at between 16 and 18 per cent for their female share.
When one looks at the list of candidates to assess how many of those candidates will actually be in contention for seats, it is clear that the 30th Dáil will be as male a bastion as the 29th Dáil. It is striking that after two decades which have seen a transformation of the levels of female participation in the workforce, so few women are still selected to fight for a place in our most significant political workplace.
The political experience of the candidates is also interesting. Fianna Fáil has 12 sitting deputies who are not recontesting this election, if you include Michael Collins who no longer holds the party whip. These retirements will affect Fianna Fáil's prospects in 11 different constituencies; both of their outgoing deputies in Dublin North are stepping down.
The Fianna Fáil deputies, who are retiring, have 214 years Dáil experience between them. Some, like Tony Dempsey in Wexford and Jim Glennon in Dublin North, are giving up after just one five-year term, but others like Joe Walsh in Cork South Central and Liam Aylward in Carlow-Kilkenny are retiring after 30-year Dáil careers.
The Labour Party has three members retiring, including current father of the House, Séamus Pattison, who steps down after an incredible 46-year Dáil career, including a term as Ceann Comhairle and one as Leas Ceann Comhairle.
Now that it has persuaded Pádraig McCormack in Galway West and Dinny McGinley in Donegal South West to reverse their decisions to retire, Fine Gael has only two sitting deputies who are not recontesting. Paul McGrath is retiring in Westmeath while Gay Mitchell, in Dublin South Central, is not contesting this Dáil election and is remaining in the European Parliament.
Mitchell's decision, along with that of some other MEPs elected in the 2004 European election, arises from a change in the law which stipulates that, from this election, an individual cannot sit simultaneously in both parliaments and must therefore choose one over the other.
The three other MEPs who have opted for Europe are Fianna Fail's Liam Aylward in Carlow-Kilkenny, Eoin Ryan in Dublin South East and the Independent MEP Marian Harkin in Sligo-North Leitrim. On the other hand, three of those elected to the European Parliament for the first time in 2004 are fighting for Dáil seats and will forfeit their European seats to lesser known substitutes if successful in their Dáil bids.
They are Fine Gael's Simon Coveney, who is hoping to retain his seat in Cork South Central, and Mairéad McGuinness in Louth, as well as Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald in Dublin Central.
The outcome of this Dáil election will also exert a significant impact on the composition of local government. Since the introduction of the dual mandate ban after the 2004 local elections, TDs and Senators cannot be members of local councils.
More than half of the other candidates contesting are currently members of county or city councils, meaning that many sitting deputies face stiff competition from party colleagues who have been active on local councils.
Among the other noteworthy features of the party candidate line-ups is that Labour, for the first time in decades, is going to contest in all constituencies and that Sinn Féin candidates are markedly younger thathose of the other parties.
Indeed, it is interesting that more than a third of Sinn Féin candidates are currently working for, or have previously worked for, the party or the republican newspaper An Phoblacht.
Overall, the parties are running about the same number of candidates as they did in the 2002 general election with both Fine Gael and Labour running a small number extra and Fianna Fáil a few less.
Some 95 candidates were designated non-party on the ballot paper in the 2002 election and it is likely that in or about the same number of Independents will run in the 2007 poll.
In all, about 450 different candidates will be knocking on doors looking for votes in the coming months.