So, the Donegal Minister Mary Coughlan, with responsibility for "The Family", is now able to find €1 million for family and community-based groups to get a grant of up to €2,000 to fund a street party booze-up, preferably to be held before the local and European elections in June 2004.
Drapier was amazed, as were other delegates, at the "City West Fest" to learn of this new source of money. Many of them, as local councillors, were already feeling the heat that her savage budgetary reductions were causing. For example, what about the reductions in rent subsidy, and how that might affect the family?
Some thought aloud as to why she did not persuade her colleagues to introduce a decent system of affordable childcare. Then young harassed couples and their children could celebrate the family every week, and not some once-off beano that Lady Bountiful might provide.
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Tom Gilmartin's continuing revelations at the Mahon tribunal are depressing. The cumulative impact of it angers Drapier deeply as democracy is the real loser, and the political process, with its volunteer activists, the victims. The levels of cynicism and disinterest displayed by the best-educated generation of Irish people is corrosive.
Just listen to the contempt in which all politicians are held by the young. With just 90 days to go to polling day, the daunting task facing idealistic candidates and their volunteer workers is not an angry confrontation with the electorate but scornful indifference.
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Sitting on the Government backbenches, Drapier began to feel the Opposition start to find its range with combined Private Members' motions, changing from a scattered-gun approach to the accuracy of a sniper.
Despite the fact that the Opposition parties raised no objection to e-voting experiments in three constituencies at the last general election, the spin doctors helped Enda Kenny, Pat Rabbitte and Trevor Sargent to undermine, in the mind of the public, the reliability of the entire process.
It was a good hit, and forced the Government to make some hasty changes to meet unified Opposition and public concerns. But the Government can begin to relax because this week the Opposition coalition returned to its normal disunited mode. Fine Gael's Gay Mitchell managed to unite the House, Government and Opposition, against the Blueshirts with his Private Member's motion on military peacekeeping overseas. Nice one!
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The normal St Patrick's Day ministerial exodus was raised in the Dáil as we will not be sitting next week.
Instead of giving out about the junketing to 25 foreign locations, Pat Rabbitte, sensitively asked the Taoiseach if the Ministers would be meeting with the less successful members of the Irish community living abroad.
Caught off guard, Bertie fumbled on the question put to him about the establishment of an agency for the Irish abroad, with a budget of €18 million as recommended by a report of the Task Force on Emigration.
His crude attempt to combine all DION spending since 1997 drew howls, particularly from Emmet Stagg.
Our people sent back the equivalent of €3.5 billion in remittances, and the Government has nothing to give them now at a time of abundance was the thrust of his angry intervention.
As the Taoiseach attempted to defend himself, Stagg, with the memory of his own family's scattering, continued until he was evicted from the House by the Ceann Comhairle.
Drapier was embarrassed, as were members on all sides of the House.
The dark side of the 50s and the 60s affected many of us from rural Ireland, and Emmet spoke from the heart and for all of us when he pointed out the meanness of the response from the Taoiseach.
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Joe Higgins reminds Drapier of the late acerbic John Kelly of Fine Gael. The South Dublin deputy would enter the House with meticulously-rehearsed spontaneous remarks. On Tuesday, Joe had the Technical Group Leader's questions slot. His original calling to the seminary showed as he piled exaggeration on exaggeration in his critique of Mr Ahern's invitation to President Bush to a summit in Ireland this June. The Dáil's doubtful gain is undoubtedly the Redemptorists' greater loss.
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Drapier wonders just what the Ryan family ever did to Bertie Ahern, and why he is hell-bent at having another cut at young Eoin. The Dublin South East TD is a candidate of the Soldiers of Destiny for the Dublin Euro seat vacated by Niall Andrews.
At the last moment, after Sean Haughey backed off as second candidate, Mount Street HQ persuaded Dublin's Lord Mayor, Royston Brady, to put his hat in the ring. No sooner was he selected, when he displayed a unique knowledge of European affairs, unable to name the capital of any of the new member-states.
Yet An Taoiseach has made no secret of his preference for the diplomatically-challenged Lord Mayor, who is a councillor in the Taoiseach's Dublin Central constituency, over the former Minister of State. Will Royston be a local election candidate as well as a European election candidate just in case?
Eoin Ryan snr, now deceased, was a major figure in Fianna Fáil and a bitter opponent of Charles Haughey. Bertie, as whip, in and out of government, had a ring side seat when the heaves were on against his Kinsealy master. Does the bitterness of those times still remain?