It was a rum sort of week with the major parties inflicting more damage on themselves than their opponents could ever hope to do.
For a start there was the Fine Gael tax debacle. Looked at coldly the amounts involved were small. There were few businesses which in those days - maybe even still - did not give cash payments as bonuses at Christmas or for extra work. And the individual sums involved were small.
That, however, as Michael Noonan now knows, is not the point. Politicians have now replaced priests as the people who must be seen to be cleaner than clean. We make the laws and there will be no mercy shown to any of us seen to transgress. Maybe the day will come when the same scrutiny will apply to journalists, though Drapier doubts it.
It was a painful week for Fine Gael, and Drapier has rarely seen people so shell shocked as were the members of the Fine Gael parliamentary party. By all accounts Wednesday's meeting was a sombre affair as the party sought to come to terms with the long-term damage caused by the affair and also with the suspicion that the series of damaging leaks are not necessarily the dirty tricks many suspected but may be more sinister or may be the result of cock-ups.
Michael Noonan has had little luck since becoming leader. He needs a period of calm to find his bearings and assert himself. That in part explains the rumours about the South Tipp by-election which swept the House on Wednesday night. In Tom Hayes he has a good candidate who will start as firm favourite. Michael Noonan needs to get out and about but most of all he needs a victory. For that reason Drapier expects to spend much of June in Cashel or Clonmel. And there could be worse places at that time.
For Fianna Fail what should have been a great week had its nightmare qualities. The health think-in at Ballymascanlon was widely sold in advance as the opening shot in what will be the longest general election campaign in our history. It was the Government getting its retaliation in first, disarming and defusing what most people think will be the key issue in the election. Drapier warns, though, that what may well look like being the key issue months beforehand can very quickly be pushed off the agenda once the campaign begins.
But back to Ballymascanlon. If the intention was to defuse this issue, then it badly misfired. Micheal Martin is a master of public relations but this time the hype proved counterproductive. Charlie McCreevy is his own man and there was no way he was going to be bounced into spending commitments of the size Micheal Martin's plans require.
So when Charlie spoke to the media on Monday afternoon he did not just deflate the hype but rained on Micheal Martin's parade. The meeting ended without a single decision or new proposal. What must have looked like a good idea at the time, backfired and left the plans of the Government's PR people in tatters.
Charlie McCreevy, more than most, realises that reforming the health service is about much more than pouring in extra money. It is about shaking up some of the most entrenched vested interests in the State. That is why Charlie McCreevy is not going to rush in until he is sure there will be value for money and that more investment will mean real change.
In the long run he is right, but in the short run he did more to wreck Micheal Martin's big day than the combined efforts of the Opposition. Not that all of Micheal's colleagues were too upset.
As for the Dublin Castle shindig, it only goes to show that problems come from the least expected places and that the biggest problems are often self-inflicted.
Drapier was present on Monday night and like most of those at the Castle he was unaware of the unfolding drama all round. It was a pleasant if conservative evening and Drapier has to say that these sort of affairs are very well done by the protocol people, even if they can be a bit stuffy.
But on the invitation, the Protocol people got it wrong. It was as simple as that and it put Celia Larkin into an impossible position. That position was understood by most people in here and it was significant that no word of criticism, not even a snide remark, came from either House. But it was inevitable that others would not remain silent, and few on the Government side thanked Liz O'Donnell for reawakening a controversy that was slowing down.
Drapier was astonished at the depth of popular feeling on the matter - at least if the radio chat shows are anything to go by. Indeed, the reaction combined with the huge crowds attending the St Therese of Lisieux ceremonies around the country show that Catholic and traditional Ireland is alive and well, but whether this translates into votes for any particular party is another day's work. Drapier doubts that it does, people tend to separate these matters.
Meanwhile, the future of the subcommittee attempting to examine the Abbeylara shooting has longer-term implications for the functioning of the Houses of the Oireachtas. It was clear from the start that the Garda and the Garda Representative Association would do everything to prevent the committee doing its work and the performance of the Commissioner on the first day set the tone. The impression given was that the Garda was an autonomous body, not answerable to the Oireachtas. It is no secret the committee is bogged down and may be subject to such delays that it will never get off the ground, at least not before the next election. Drapier advises his colleagues not to be discouraged. The principle of committee investigation is an important one and the right to examine the activities of the Garda is no different to the right of the Public Accounts Committee to examine the affairs of the banks. But it is going to be a long and dirty fight and it will need stamina and persistence to see it through.
It is a battle that has to be won, otherwise the steady reform of procedures and the extension of the powers of the Oireachtas over the past decade could be halted abruptly.
Finally, happy birthday to Fianna Fail. It's a long way from La Scala to here but the party has much to celebrate even if it needs to get its version of the past 30 years across to balance the less than favourable version conveyed in RTE's O'Malley series. But Drapier has no doubt such work is already in hand.