Just a week into the new year and already plenty to keep us going. Jim Mitchell began where he left off, Dessie O'Malley was quick into action on an old target; Michael Noonan spots the banks pulling a fast one; our mental hospital regime is slammed; Dr Michael Somers, chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency, is proven right and the Department of Finance wrong; the Church of Ireland Gazette sticks to its guns about Bertie Ahern's domestic arrangements; Larry Goodman is in the news again, and yet another MEP is peeved with Drapier.
Not bad for the Silly Season. Not bad either that their lordships of the Supreme Court have given the go-ahead to the Flood tribunal. Drapier hopes Wednesday's decision will allow Mr Justice Flood get on with his work; let people put up or shut up and let us finally have it all out in the open.
The long wait and the uncertainty has been bad for everybody - too many rumours, too many overpaid spin-doctors getting their retaliation in early, too much innuendo and too many downright lies have all made for a festering and malevolent scenario.
By now we have had too much of it all and the sooner the judge gets down to the substantial issues the better. Drapier suspects, less rather than more, will emerge, but let us at least get down to work, especially since Drapier expects another spate of pre-tribunal rumours this weekend. They will probably be as baseless as most of the other rumours we have heard, but it has become tedious and nasty and past time to have it all out in the open.
Jim Mitchell lost no time in getting his Public Accounts Committee back to work. Drapier does not know what Jim means by a "forensic" audit but it sounds good and the Department of Agriculture needs something like it. It's strange how the Goodman name keeps cropping up.
The beef tribunal report pulled too many punches for Drapier's liking, but more than that it was buried by Albert Reynolds's government, which apparently had its own good reasons for so doing. The result is that many of the issues, very disturbing issues it should be said, have never really been addressed, and until they are we will have problems. They won't go away, even if many people would like them to.
Indeed, on the question of the beef industry, Drapier wonders what happened to the great plans of the 1980s to prepare Ireland as a major player in the niche market for quality beef? And why did the BSE figures for the last few months increase so dramatically and why are we hearing so little about it?
But back to this week. Drapier has often said Jim Mitchell is the best committee chairman in the Oireachtas. More than most, he knows publicity is the oxygen of a good committee, and between the banks and the beef, Jim has some very juicy business ahead.
Add to all of that is Des O'Malley's very obvious interest - some would say obsession - with the beef issue and we can expect a fair amount of hard hitting and straight talking in the weeks ahead. Leinster House will not be the same without Dessie O'Malley if, as he says, he will not run again. He has become a genuine elder statesman, his honesty spiked with a touch of crankiness and it's a good combination.
Then also this week we got the revenue returns and found ourselves awash in cash. It's good news and not so good news. The pressure for more spending is building in every sector and most of the cases are strong ones.
Dr Dermot Walsh's report on the State's mental hospitals makes appalling and damning reading. It's an issue Senator Mary Henry has been pushing very hard, and hopefully now people will start listening to her. This neglected problem, which should be a matter of shame to many of us, must be seriously addressed.
But there are dozens of other pressing cases - remedial education, mental handicap, nurses' pay, hospital waiting lists, rail safety, water pollution - the list is endless, and with a spare billion floating around, everybody will expect a slice of the action. If Charlie McCreevy keeps saying "no" he may find his embarrassment of riches makes him less rather than more popular.
That would be some irony.
Still on money, Drapier would like to know why the Department of Finance got its figures so wildly wrong once again. When Dr Somers suggested before Christmas that this was so, he was dumped on from a height by the mandarins in Merrion Street and Foster Place. But he was right and they were wrong (not for the first time) and the whole exercise confirmed for many people in here the high view they have of Dr Somers as an independent antidote to the conventional orthodoxy of the permanent government.
As for the Church of Ireland Gazette, Drapier listened to Canon Cooper on a number of his media forays this week. Drapier's advice to the good canon is when in a hole, stop digging. In Drapier's view, Bertie Ahern and Celia Larkin are handling a difficult situation well. They should be given the space to sort out their own arrangements, in their own time, and the last thing we need is some sort of atavistic crusade on an issue most people see as personal rather than political.
That said, Drapier welcomes the vigorous expression of views by Canon Cooper and commends the Gazette for having the courage to speak its mind and indeed for its capacity to say hard things to its own people, as it has done from time to time. Drapier is impressed too that there was no heavy-handed intervention from within the church to hinder Canon Cooper in expressing his views, or to reprimand him.
Finally, this week, to our MEPs. What is it that makes some of them so sensitive, indeed peevish? Is it all that flying, the endless committee meetings in far-flung climes, the foreign food? Drapier notes that whenever he mentions the MEPs he invariably offends one of them, and the expressions of indignation are something to behold. The fellows in here would take it all as part of the wear and tear and move on to next business.
Not so some of our MEPs. Last week poor Drapier suggested that Nuala Ahearn's seat in Leinster might be a shade vulnerable. Drapier still thinks her seat is vulnerable. He may be wrong and he won't lose much sleep either way. But he was astonished at Ms Ahearn's reaction - highly personalised criticisms of Avril Doyle and Alan Gillis - neither of whom had said a word. Strange - and the campaign hasn't even started yet.