DRAPIER: First there was the Teahon and Magahy business focusing all that attention on the Taoiseach's pet project at Abbotstown at a time when its critics had been borne out by consultants High Point Rendel.
Then there was Bobby Molloy and the judge hot on the heels of the child abuse controversy that had convulsed the Catholic Church. And now crime and the breakdown of public order has burst onto the front pages to the acute discomfort of the author of zero tolerance, John O'Donoghue.
This was not the lap of honour planned by Bertie Ahern, the man famously described as the most cunning and most devious of them all. But it shows the risks attached to an electoral strategy that goes down to the wire.
Arguably, none of this somehow is doing damage to our Teflon Taoiseach. What is doing him some damage is his blatant desertion of the Dáil while electioneering throughout the country.
This week, with Michael Woods at the helm for the Order of Business, the House virtually degenerated to farce. The hapless Minister, as Ruairí Quinn described him, was mercilessly taunted about his competence and the whereabouts of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.
The entire exercise revealed the frustration of TDs at being tied down at Leinster House by a Taoiseach who refuses to formally call the General Election but conducts himself as if it was formally underway. Too smart by half comes to mind.
There is also general annoyance that important legislation is being railroaded through the Oireachtas without anything like sufficient examination.
One hour only is allowed to debate the establishment of a tribunal into Abbeylara, a position heretofore resisted by the Government.
Worse was the manner of enactment of the Communications Regulation Bill which abolishes the Office of Director of Telecommunications Regulation and creates a Commission for Communications Regulation. This was an opportunity to provide a badly needed debate on the critical issue of telecommunications and to examine the experience to date of the director. Yet the whole thing, including Committee Stage, is disposed of in less than three hours.
The Taoiseach may yet discover that crime will jump up and bite his Government in the same way that Health surprised his old mentor Charles Haughey. The Taoiseach resorts to taking refuge behind the statistics when put under pressure on the issue.
Drapier is beginning to wonder if the crime statistics are any more meaningful than the statistics which the insurance industry fed to us for years. When the Taoiseach's canny brother Noel Ahern compliments a speech on crime by Pat Rabbitte, there is something going on out there.
Ahern and his constituency colleague Pat Carey said essentially that the conditions in working-class estates graphically described by Rabbitte were replicated in their own stamping ground. In other words, anti-social behaviour has taken over entire working-class areas.
So-called joyriders terrorise neighbourhoods. Senior citizens and people living alone are fearful for their personal safety. Burnt out cars are strewn throughout these estates. The estates themselves are pockmarked from the work of vandals and youths alienated from any concept of society.
Drapier was impressed by Labour's Tommy Broughan's timely resurrection of his Anti-Joyriding Bill voted down by the Government almost two years ago.
Surely given the circumstances of the tragic deaths of two courageous gardaí, if the Taoiseach is determined to allow the Dáil limp on, the Labour deputy's Bill could easily be adapted if necessary and signed into law?
At dinner parties in the handsome drawing rooms in our leafier suburbs there is, no doubt, much well-intentioned discussion about juvenile crime, early intervention, rehabilitation and so on. In the estates tormented by rampaging youths there is no equivocation about the imperative of taking out the ringleaders. Yet Michael Noonan, in carving up Michael Woods on Thursday, established that there are only 31 remand places available for out of control youth.
This anti-social phenomenon will not be tackled by building a €1,000 million stadium at Abbotstown but as Father Peter McVerry said during the week a fraction of that expenditure on programmes such as Lifestart would have considerable effect.
In one of his less flowery speeches when he became Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue announced, as Brendan Howlin reminded the House this week, that the test of his period of office would be whether citizens feel safer in their homes and on the streets. Sadly, they don't.
O'Donoghue managed to more or less extricate himself in the Molloy resignation debate largely because the Opposition had no smoking gun and little stomach to prolong this sad and sordid affair.
However after a forensic speech by Alan Shatter, in particular, the overwhelming impression was of a man who signs letters without knowing what he is signing and who is not in control of his Department.
The show this week was stolen by a Ms Dorothea Dowling, guiding light of the Report on Motor Insurance which in its clarity and simplicity turns the traditional position of the insurance industry on its head.
The findings of the Dowling Report also undermined the acquiescence of the insurance regulator, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, with industry spin.