There was a lot of relief around the House this week, accompanied by a great deal of tiredness and that peculiar flatness which afflicts most candidates, even after a successful election.
For the most part, however, the overwhelming majority of TDs and senators were successful. Never mind that some people say that we shouldn't be running for local elections at all, the simple fact is that once the elections are called, the only way to go is towards the winning post.
In addition, elections narrow the focus to the strictly narrow gauge with little time for the broad view and it is only after the battles have been won that any sort of overall picture begins to emerge - not for the pundits but for the participants.
As is so often the case in politics, it is now on to next business. The North and the tribunals are already reasserting their dominance of the news schedules and will continue to do so for the coming months, though whether it makes any difference to the way people think and vote is another day's work.
Drapier still thinks it will, in spite of the Fianna Fail spin to the contrary - that Labour did badly because Ruairi Quinn was nasty to Fianna Fail.
One thing is clear. Any temptation there might have been for a rush to the country - and Drapier did not detect any such evidence - has been firmly put to bed. Nobody in here - and that includes Fianna Fail - believed the pre-election polls and especially the claim that Fianna Fail had over 50 per cent of the vote. So it proved to be.
Jack Jones is not the only one wondering what happens to the Fianna Fail vote in that period between the taking of the opinion poll and the casting of ballots. The only certainty is that the pattern of a fissiparous tendency in the Fianna Fail vote at the late stages of the campaign is by now well and truly established. It has become one of the great mysteries of our time.
On the figures for both elections, an overall Fianna Fail majority is not on at present. The party did well to add to what it had won in 1991 which was a bad year only by comparison with the extremely good year of 1985. Fianna Fail's presence on local authorities remains solid, but not strong enough to prompt any rush to the polls.
Nor, in spite of brave words, do the PDs have much to comfort them. The rout was avoided and that was a relief, but hardly a victory. Some good candidates emerged, especially young Fiona O'Malley in Stillorgan, but there was little to suggest any new Dail seats in the offing.
Limerick perhaps was hopeful, Galway will continue to return Bobby Molloy, there are stirrings in Dublin South and maybe even Dun Laoghaire, but after that, there was little comfort on offer and once again it is a question of battening down the hatches and hoping for the best.
Fine Gael performed competently but it also emerged with serious candidate weaknesses in a number of key constituencies and has a fair bit of work to do before it could enter a general election with any great degree of confidence. Labour even more so.
It was a spotty result, certainly not a good one, bearing out the fear that the merger was not an automatic passport to more votes and seats. In this context the forthcoming by-election in Dublin South Central takes on a new importance for Ruairi Quinn.
For most people Sinn Fein was the real winner, not just in gaining council seats but in positioning people to take Dail seats.
Drapier was amused to see some people already starting to view Sinn Fein as potential coalition partners. Stranger things have happened. At the very least, the established parties have been put on notice, though Drapier rejects the new myth that the conventional parties are not active in deprived areas - it's simply not true and the evidence is there to see. Sinn Fein may now expect a greater level of media scrutiny of some of its tactics and personnel, a scrutiny which has been absent. The most depressing aspect of the local elections was the message of paralysis it sent out to those who actually have to make the system work. Candidates only had to be "against" some proposal to garner instant votes - against a super-dump, against rezoning, against development and most of all, against halting sites.
People who were unknown a few weeks earlier, even in their own communities, were swept in on single issues, largely middle class, attracting middle-class support. In some areas the anti-Traveller message was only slightly veiled and in one or two instances was downright nasty.
It all means that just as we are enshrining local government in our Constitution, that self-same local government is becoming impossible to operate.
Rational long-term planning, attempts to address fundamental issues such as waste, housing density, service charges and most of all Travellers, are certain to be met with hostility and opposition, often of a quite virulent type. That is one of the real lessons of the campaign; it is the negative side to the Celtic Tiger.
Let Drapier make another point: he was struck by the number of people, youngish, well-paid, in good houses, who were so utterly dismissive of all politics and all politicians.
It was as if this new prosperity was all their own making, that the idea of community was superfluous and that all that counted was themselves, yet these same people, so dismissive and contemptuous of the political process and of politicians, are the first to complain if services are not up to scratch, if waiting lists are too long or if the State is not being run to their priorities.
There is a clear message to politicians - if you want our support, reflect our priorities and forget the wider picture and the larger community. It was a disquieting sub-text, reported by all parties and comforting to none.
As for the high-profile casualties, there was general sympathy for Nora Owen. She went against her better judgment, helped to hold a seat which had all but slipped away, but paid a high personal price. Drapier, however, sees it as no more than a short-term blip and thinks that ironically she may have secured her Dail seat in the process.
Drapier cannot understand why Liam Lawlor even bothered to run. He had lost that seat eight years ago and found himself in the middle of a High Court case of his own calling during polling week. Unlike Nora Owen, he was under no party pressure to run, nor was there any overall party interest involved. Whatever happened, he was not well advised and he paid the price.