DRAPIER met a senior Government adviser on Wednesday. Normally a grave and stately man with the weight of the world heavily on his shoulders and his own importance in that world never understated. Drapier won't tell what party he was, but to Drapier's surprise he was smiling.

"Isn't it great?" he said. "Two more weeks of this and nobody will pay a blind bit of notice to anything we do."

It took Drapier a few further sentences to realise it was the Rocca/Ryan case he was talking about - and more to the point the fact that it was shoving current Government difficulties off the front pages.

Because that is what our Government managers want more than anything else at present - a quiet life over a protracted period, to wear down the opposition, fray its nerves and all the time look and behave magisterially. He began muttering to Drapier something about "bread and circuses..

Not that there is any great chance of a quiet life materialising. What with nurses, tribunals, group water schemes and much else, the political agenda is brimming over. But most of all there is the North.

The death of Lance-Bombardier Stephen Restorick, shot in the back on Wednesday evening, sent a shudder around Leinster House. There was a hollow inevitability about the ritual condemnations. They were sincere, they were angry - and they were weary.

And, we asked ourselves, to what end? It seemed to most of us that we were living in the land of the deaf - the British government has clearly closed the Northern file until after the election, David Trimble and company are in no mood to listen to anybody, while Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness continue to debase language and empty it of any meaning.

Clearly we can't give up. The reality is, and we have to keep reminding ourselves at times like this, that enormous progress has been made. We happen to be in one of those black valley periods, but we have been in them before and from previous experience the best course is to keep going, doing the things we can do and keeping open all available avenues and options.

That may not be much, but it is all we've got and we have to make the best of it. At least the controversy surrounding the attempt to have Jean Kennedy Smith fired as American ambassador, which has all the fingerprints of the British Foreign Office on it, indicates that President Clinton's interest in Northern Ireland will continue and that the State Department will keep its mind open.

There is strong support here for Jean Kennedy Smith and respect for what she has done, with general satisfaction that she appears to be staying a second term.

MEANWHlLE, back at the ranch, the view is that Bertie Ahern did not have a great week. Drapier said last week that Bertie made a mistake in raising the stakes on the Dunnes inquiry and that neither he nor John Bruton had scored particularly well with the public on their Dail/Seanad exchanges of Thursday week. Hostages to fortune and all that sort of things Better let the tribunal do its business and leave it at that.

But there was general bemusement at the nature and timing of Bertie's Trinity College pronouncements on ethics. For a start his statement did not allude to Eithne FitzGerald's Ethics Act, which does provide for a commission and for a complaints procedure against public figures, and what Bertie was proposing, apart from its woolliness, would duplicate all that.

What was equally unfortunate was that many in the media linked Bertie's concern with the Clare fraud case, where a councillor is awaiting sentence. Fairly or unfairly (and Drapier believes unfairly), Bertie's declaration was interpreted as an attempt to limit damage fallout from that case.

It was a bad call. No fair-minded person could blame Fianna Fail for the Clare case. The person in question may have been a Fianna Fail councillor, but the crimes were committed in his capacity as an executive of SFADCo. Drapier reckons, however, that we are all so sensitive and paranoid in here at present and so battered by sections of the media that fair play is the last thing we expect.

In any event, the way things are going we politicians will be the most regulated and most policed group in the country, even though all of us face the ultimate accountability of having to face our electors, while our media critics are unelected (indeed many of them unelectable) and essentially unaccountable.

It all sparked off some black humour. Bertie's proposals for an internal ethics commission within Fianna Fail provoked one colleague to ask whether this would not do the PDs out of a job. After all isn't one of their claims for votes based on their assertion that they are the people who can keep Fianna Fail on the straight and narrow?

Nor did the leaked version of Michael Buckley's report do much to improve humour. Drapier would prefer to see the full report before rushing to judgment, but certainly it is partly our own fault and partly the populist reaction of sections of the media that TDs' and senators' salaries have fallen away behind, just as the volume of work is increasing.

Drapier is weary of the subject, but Jim Mitchell is right. It is increasingly difficult to get good candidates for any party and it is going to get more difficult.

FlNALLY, to a few odds and ends. The Group Water Scheme issue has been simmering for some time now. Paul Connaughton, who has a good nose for these matters, has been warning all who would listen that there was a serious issue here, but without getting any great reaction.

He has been proved right, and while in Drapier's view the matter is one that is capable of resolution, it shows a level of submerged rural anger waiting for an issue to wrap itself around. It is an example of the sort of issue which can come from nowhere, take everyone by surprise and do great damage.

Lastly this week the Universities Bill. You remember it, of course, with Niamh Bhreathnach hell-bent on destroying all that our universities held dear - centuries of tradition, academic freedom, the autonomy of Trinity (not to mention the port and perks of its Fellows).

Where is it now? Drapier can tell you because nobody else will - moving harmoniously through Seamus Pattison's committee and well on its way back to the Dail and thence to the Senate around Eastertime.

And what of the threats to civilisation it represented? Well, the university heads are not just happy with the Bill, they are positively purring. The Fellows of Trinity College are backing their Provost and apparently a good job has been done all round, and especially, let Drapier say it this Valentine weekend, by Niamh Bhreathnach.