DRAPIER: Forget about the public expressions of sympathy with his family, Drapier did not meet a single Oireachtas member who was not glad that Ray Burke had finally got jail.
Privately many of us dreaded an outburst of misplaced sympathy from the bench that would have confirmed the prejudices of the many cynical, anti-political people already out there - there is one law for us and one law for the rest of the country.
Burke should also lose his pension if Drapier is reflecting the comments of some Fianna Fáil backbenchers. Rambo may have been admired, even respected, but he was never liked.
Despite his long association with the late Brian Lenihan, he had none of his mentor's populist touch and, by contrast, was full of arrogance.
Why did Bertie bring him back in from the cold after Albert shafted him? When it looked like Spring and Ahern might put a new coalition together in 1994, senior FF figures like Máire Geoghegan-Quinn were muttering then about the unacceptability of Ray Burke, but Bertie persisted, in the full knowledge of the rumours, three years later.
Why? Simple. Because they were both part of the Kinsealy set, and remain so to this day.
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The nod and wink dialogue with Sinn Féin is over, and Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness know it. The Provos cannot go back to war: they would end up in Guatanamo Bay and Sinn Féin/IRA would be closed down in the US.
Stormont is set to be mothballed, once again cutting off a lifeline for the Sinn Féin democrats who were beginning to like the feel of their elected status and respect within the nationalist community. Northern Ireland is set for a period of prolonged and disinterested direct rule after Blair wins a comfortable third election in May. The Taoiseach, after his sharp exchanges on Wednesday, will turn off the oxygen of publicity which makes Gerry Adams go rigid with excitement when he gets close to a microphone or TV camera.
Meanwhile Caoimhghín Ó Wailing, Anguish Ó Snodaigh and Martin Ferret will scramble around the Dáil, inarticulate and irrelevant.
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Drapier was pleased to see all the colleagues back after the break. The Soldiers of Destiny have a spring in their step with the Government's approval rating up in the polls and the success of Bertie's rebranding of the "Legion of the Rearguard" as "Vanguards of Hibernian Socialism".
The lads in the members' bar are still roaring with laughter, revelling in the gullibility of the media and the discomfort of Labour. Sure isn't it all a game of power and positioning? Didn't the Chief set the standard, back in 1927, when de Valera described the oath of allegiance, over which a civil war had been fought some years previously, as merely an empty formula.
Drapier is assured that the rebranding is also working for the PDs. Tánaiste Mary Harney has succeeded in presenting herself as having being very brave to apparently enter government recently and take on the onerous task of the Department of Health. After all, for the last seven years she must have been on a permanent junket with the IDA, and clearly, as Tánaiste, had no involvement in the actions of Brian Cowen or Micheál Martin when they were in Health.
Besides, isn't Cabinet collective responsibility one of those outdated socialist concepts that has no place in the modern Celtic world of rugged individualism!
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Fianna Fáil is going to lose the two forthcoming by-elections. Young Charlie McCreevy has spurned requests to run after his dad was shafted by Fianna Fáil and exiled to Brussels. Surely they cannot expect the people of Meath to vote for their proposed candidate, Tommy O'Reilly, who in 1997 purchased a plot of land with Frank Dunlop using an offshore company.
Victory for the Mullingar Accord will be proclaimed when Labour takes Kildare North and Fine Gael takes Meath. Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte will describe it as a mandate to proceed to build a decent electoral alternative. Trevor Sargent will insist that it was the transfers from the Green candidates which ensured victory.
In turn, the prospective Taoiseach and Tánaiste will tell Clever Trevor to come back and talk to them when the Irish Green Party decides, in March, to follow the rest of the European Green Party and endorse the Constitutional Treaty of the EU.
John Gormley is fighting a losing battle in straddling the fence on neutrality and militarism within the EU. American and Australian troops were in the front line of humanitarian aid in Asia after the tsunami disaster. As GOAL's John O'Shea pointed out on the Late Late Show, Europe had no fire brigade to rush in and help Asians and Europeans right across the Indian ocean. The Greens are changing their position because Ciaran Cuffe, Eamon Ryan, Dan Boyle, and Paul Gogarty know that if the party does not change its policy then they will not be elected to the next Dáil.
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After a couple of days Drapier detects a mood of retrenchment amongst the returning members of the Dáil and Seanad.
The general election is 2½ years away. There will be no local, European or presidential elections before then. The referendum on the Constitutional Treaty is anticipated next autumn.
In the meantime, solid work will be done, progress made and even hospital waiting lists reduced as the prospect for good steady government gathers.
The worm eating into this benign vision is the corrosive arrogance and incompetence of the likes of Martin Cullen who did noting wrong and who has drawn a line in the sand.
Like Ray Burke.