DRAPIER: All is changed, changed utterly. The political landscape looks seriously different, yet the Government is likely to remain the same. So much for polls and punditry. The Fianna Fáil support stays loyal, the economic feel-good factor prevails and the party for a second successive election chalks up a huge seats bonus.
The debris is everywhere. Fine Gael is the biggest loser but Labour may be in bigger trouble. Fine Gael has done so badly that - provided they can find a leader - its fortunes can only improve.
The natural Labour vote is under attack in marginalised communities from Sinn Féin and, in more middle-class mainstream areas, from the Greens.
Of course, in politics nothing remains the same. It may be that we will have the same Government but nothing else will be as before.
Fianna Fáil and the PDs have been swept back to office - if that is what transpires - on the crest of an economic wave. The new economic situation will require from this Government for the first time some hard decisions.
In these changed circumstances in the new Dáil, it is likely that Labour will be the party in opposition to distinguish itself. Labour may have had a disappointing result but its has managed to return with the most experienced parliamentary team.
Fine Gael, on the other hand, will be demoralised and will have to concoct a front bench without its leading parliamentarians. Sinn Féin, the Greens and the medley of Independents may well scream loudly from the sidelines but it is difficult to see any element putting forward a coherent alternative.
The chorus to change Dáil standing orders has already begun but the requirement to have seven deputies before being accorded parliamentary party status has withstood attack down the years.
Bertie Ahern will be most unlikely to concede change now and even the PDs had to live by the rules when they fell below the threshold. The configuration of opposition will be most changed. Many of our leading parliamenta- rians are election casualties.
Who among us would have predicted the departure of politicians of the stature of Dick Spring and Alan Dukes? Also gone are Mary O'Rourke, Jim Mitchell, Jim Higgins, Derek McDowell and Alan Shatter.
There is no questioning the will of the people but the loss of colleagues of the calibre of Higgins, McDowell, Shatter and others is salutary.
It is difficult to envisage a Fine Gael frontbench without Dukes or a Dáil without Spring.
Michael McDowell, architect of the PD resurgence, is back in the Dáil. No small party in the history of Irish politics - Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta, the Workers Party or the Greens - has received a fraction of the media adulation and column inches devoted to the PDs. Now that they got the result so badly wrong, sections of the media are likely to spend the summer months alternating between McDowell and Roy Keane.
That much said, McDowell was first to identify the would-be Fine Gael voter who would be prepared to switch allegiance to stop Bertie from getting an overall majority. Forlorn PD candidates benefited handsomely from their president's insight and Roy Keane-style antics.
Unlike the Roy Keane affair and despite his impertinence during the campaign, Bertie will be afraid to do a Mick McCarthy on the new member from Dublin South East. For the first time, the PDs are likely to find that they have a serious rival in the shape of another small party for the attention of the media.
The choreography associated with every move of Sinn Féin leaves the PDs looking as if they lack professionalism; every time, the media can be relied on to deliver.
Several TV crews, hundreds of flashing bulbs and dozens of journalists, gardaí and Dáil ushers form a respectful reception party for Gerry Adams and his newly elected deputies as they "inspect the facilities at Leinster House" and portentously announce that they are in favour of "change in this part of the island". One change might be that Sinn Féin itself is now likely to attract more serious scrutiny.
Drapier expects the Greens to hold up well to such examination.
They seem to have organised themselves on a more professional basis and to have rid themselves of the earlier, almost anarchic, image. Their new deputies are impressive and coherent even if their economic policies remain something of a mystery.
This writer is also inclined to agree with John Bruton. The notion of a new broad left alliance on the opposition benches seems rather far fetched. Labour spent too long ridding itself of Joe Higgins to want to revive any link with him or other kindred spirits.
The Greens' economic policies will have to undergo the same makeover as their internal political structures before anything other than tactical alliances are probable.
Bertie Ahern is about to be safely ensconced in office, mightily assisted by the feel-good factor and not in the slightest impeded by tribunals or ethical lapses. Michael Noonan is likely to relegate himself to the back- benches after a harvest of seats many times fewer than his worst expectations.
Ruairí Quinn will ponder where a favourite Labour scenario went wrong. How could the collapse of Fine Gael not benefit Labour? Mary Harney, after she gets over her surprise, will realise the PDs are nothing if not a party of government and a deal will be done. The Greens will cut a dash on the non- economic issues. Sinn Féin will find the going tougher than it imagines.
The newer Independents will be shocked to learn that they won't matter. Meanwhile, we await some serious analysis of the role of opinion polls before the election and of how Fianna Fáil successfully guided the media.