Drapier would like to make mention this weekend of Mr David E. Byrne. Mr Byrne is Bertie Ahern's Attorney General and has been since last June. By all accounts, and indeed as Drapier himself can aver, he is a decent and honourable man, much respected by his colleagues.
The reason Drapier mentions David Byrne is that after just three months in business he had his first experience this week of members of the Opposition calling on him to consider his position, if not resign. Drapier tells him not to pay a blind bit of notice to these calls. Drapier was just wondering how long it would take for the first such call, and it came even sooner than he expected.
The Office of Attorney General has changed mightily in recent years. There was a time when most people, including many TDs and senators, barely knew who the Attorney General was. Only rarely did his name surface.
Andreas O Caoimh took a bit of a political hammering after the collapse of the Dr Singer stamp fraud case back in the early 1960s; Patrick Connolly made his own headlines in the year of GUBU; but it is only in very recent times that the office of Attorney General has moved centre-stage. Harry Whelehan did his bit to ensure a high political visibility, but it was only in the time of Dermot Gleeson that the Attorney General became central to much of political debate.
Not that Dermot Gleeson wanted it that way, and in Drapier's view history will judge him as one of the great reforming attorneys general. It happened because of the close interplay between legal and political issues in recent times. Indeed, there were times during the term of the last government when some members of Fianna Fail and the PDs - the latter especially - would hardly let a week pass without calling for Gleeson's resignation.
So David Byrne now knows what lies ahead, but there is no way Drapier is blaming him for the dog's dinner Bertie Ahern made of his handling of the Burke affair this week. Whatever Bertie was trying to do, it did not work. If he was trying in some Machiavellian way to exclude Ray Burke from the terms of the inquiry he failed and was destined to fail.
Drapier, however, is not sure that such was his intention. But for some reason, doing the straightforward and obvious thing seems to be foreign to Bertie's personality. He would have been much better served had he done the obvious this week and would have saved himself a lot of unnecessary trouble and bad publicity in the process. There was no sureness of touch in evidence this week.
Nor will Fianna Fail people be grateful to Willie O'Dea, whose solo-run attempt to deflect attention from Ray Burke angered many of his colleagues by its ineptitude. All in all, the whole thing was a mess. It got Bertie Ahern his worst press since he became Taoiseach, and there was no sign by the end of the week that Bertie was learning anything from it.
Not that anybody in here was taking much pleasure from it. It is in everyone's interest that any charges lying around should be investigated with urgency and dispatch. The overwhelming majority of politicians are honest, modest and hard-working. We are known to our neighbours who vote for us, and all of us are sick and tired of carrying the stigma of dishonesty which now appears to attach to all politicians.
Let Drapier recount two conversations he had this week. The first was with an American journalist who knows this country well and likes what he sees here. He is astonished at the anti-politician mood and at the fact that so many of our presidential candidates proclaim themselves to be non-politicians, as if that in itself was some self-evident virtue.
"Look," he said, "you have the best economy in the world. You have one of the best-run countries that I have experienced. All that didn't happen by accident. It happened because of the stability of your political system and because your politicians have handled the big issues with great skill." Drapier agreed, but try telling that to some of the media begrudgers.
And the other conversation? It was with a local councillor, a decent and honest person devoted to the best interests of his community, a man who gives a lot and gets little in return. He told Drapier he would not run again. Why? Rezoning, of course.
He explained to Drapier: "We have a choice. We can accept the views of the officials as if they were holy writ or we can exercise our own judgment. We're the people who have to live with the decisions, and we are the ones closest to the people affected. Sometimes we get it right - most of the time, I think - and that is why we are elected. But to be called a rezoner today is like being called a paedophile. The very word is loaded against us."
This man had had enough and Drapier can't blame him. Drapier suspects there are many more like him.
What Drapier is saying is that Bertie Ahern misjudged the mood in all parties this week. Our problems won't go away until we confront them, and smart-ass evasions have no place in the current mood.
The other bit of interest this week apart from the presidential election was, of course, the polls. As far as the presidential election is concerned, Drapier is glad to see that Derek Nally got his nomination and wishes him well.
Nally is a fine person, and while he won't be elected, in Drapier's view he will do well. Drapier also noted that his prediction of last week that Mary Banotti could prove to be the slow burner gained some legs during the week with her 5 per cent rise in the polls. There are still four long weeks to go.
As for the party ratings, Drapier has to say he has never taken early or mid-term polls too seriously. Too much can and does happen, but nonetheless Drapier wouldn't be honest if he said we don't pay great attention to them. We do.
For the PDs the figures are ominous. It is a strange irony. Here they are, ensconced securely in power with a Taoiseach who listens, and having more power prorata than any other party, and yet there is little of the joyful about the PDs at present. Drapier detects an underlying nervousness, with no great sense of confidence about what the future may hold.
