The leaders of the four main parties are preparing for the final debate of the election campaign.

Enda Kenny, Joan Burton, Micheal Martin and Gerry Adams will take part in the debate on RTE One.

The 90-minute debate, beginning at 9:35pm, will be chaired by Miriam O'Callaghan.

The stakes are relatively high for all four participants.

After a relatively flat campaign, and disquiet over his comments that some people in his home town of Castlebar are 'whingers', Enda Kenny will be hopeful of restating his credentials as Taoiseach and outlining the flaws in the records of his major rivals.

Micheal Martin, meanwhile, will be keen to cement what has been a relatively strong comeback for his party over the last fortnight, in particular how it has managed exploit Fine Gael's weaker arguments in non-economic areas.

Gerry Adams has been somewhat marginalised in more recent days by the rising support for the two larger parties, and will be keen to use his appearance to advocate for an alternative approach to those put forward by the two larger parties.

For Joan Burton the stakes are particularly high - Labour's support is now not much bigger than that of the smaller parties including the AAA-PBP or Social Democrats, and she will need to make a major impression and forcefully argue the case for requiring their presence not alone in government, but in significant numbers in the Dáil.