Drapier: Events this week demonstrate that Michael Smith's forced climbdown following his solo run against the Hanly reforms came too late to be effective.
That sort of indiscipline is infectious. Furthermore, the Taoiseach's baffling expression of "geographics and demographics" has opened up a virtual licence for exceptions to be made all over the place.
A "Fianna Fáil Clare" banner held aloft by Tony Killeen in an anti-Hanly protest in Ennis last weekend spoke volumes about Fianna Fáil jitters on the proposed hospital reforms.
Frankly, colleagues are getting worried about Michéal Martin's capacity to deliver. There are mutterings that he has spent so much time and energy on the smoking ban that he has little vigour for the big reform agenda. To be fair, we all know from the last election and the raft of hospital candidates elected as Independents that local hospitals should be treated with kid gloves.
Like it or not, they are a source of local employment, of solace at times of trauma, and constitute a community support system to which people are almost irrationally attached. Drapier's advice to Michéal Martin is that he should beef up the A&E services in the major hospitals such as Limerick before attempting to downgrade local hospitals in Nenagh and Ennis. If the reforms are not seen to work in practical terms in the two pilot areas identified, Hanly will be a non-runner.
Politically it's a gift from heaven to the opposition, and Senator Kathleen O'Meara of the Labour Party has now made herself vice-chairwoman of the Nenagh Hospital Action Group.
Cross-party, we all know that with the spending estimate on health set at €10 billion for next year, 43 per cent up since 2001, and constituting a quarter of all public spending, it is in the national interest that these changes go ahead and that value for money is delivered for taxpayers' money.
Funding of a different kind dominated debate in the Seanad this week. Drapier had a sinking feeling of X case déja-vu listening to senators wrestling with their conscience about European funding for research on embryonic stem cells derived from IVF treatment.
Mary Harney courageously sat for three hours listening and trying to clarify the Government's position on a forthcoming vote at the Council of Ministers at the end of November. Senators Terry Leyden and John Hanafin, among others, distanced Fianna Fáil from support of any EU funding not only in Ireland but anywhere.
But there were also liberal voices. Independent Senators David Norris, Mary Henry, Maurice Hayes and Joe O'Toole spoke passionately and with predictable common sense and were supportive of the Government's balanced line.
Drapier tended to agree with David Norris's description of Fine Gael's overall performance on this sensitive issue as "lamentable politicking" and of his description of Mary Henry's approach as a "model of logic".
Scaremongering aside, what is involved here is the establishment of clear guidelines and safeguards to govern research on embryonic stem cells derived from IVF at European level in member-states where it is ethical and legal. The Commission's proposal explicitly respects the positions of those member-states, like Ireland, whose legal and ethical regimes currently forbid such embryonic stem cell research. All this raises serious questions of respect for the human embryo.
Liberals and conservatives alike recognise that the embryo constitutes much more than biological material. But given the suffering on the part of so many people with incurable diseases, medical research is also an ethical duty.
Mary Harney referred to a twofold duty to take the initiative of research but to exercise precaution.
The tone of the political debate so far has been courteous and tolerant of difference, but Drapier can foresee a constitutional and ethical minefield ahead when and if we ever come to legislate on such research here.
Not before time, the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Bill is before the House. The aim is to reduce the cost and time of delivering personal injuries compensation by providing an alternative to the courts.
Ignore the pleading of lawyers, the fact is that litigation costs add over 40 per cent to the cost of compensation and in turn to the cost of insurance in Ireland.
But taken with the penalty points, a streamlining of court procedures and the promised outlawing of spurious and exaggerated claims, this measure should reduce the ferocious and unsustainable costs of insurance to business and punter alike.
There was fierce slagging of Ministers Walsh and McCreevy, the "Punchestown Two" when they appeared in the House on Thursday. The Committee of Public Accounts is still sniffing around the 100 per cent funding of the pet equestrian project, and predictable comparisons were being drawn as between underfunded schools around the country and Government generosity for "nags and Jags", as Pat Rabbitte put it.
Deputies were hopping mad when a deputy, a Green in more ways than one, likened TDs' salary increases to "urinating on the poor". Yet another new deputy with no family to support, and clearly no work to do, playing to the populist-press gallery in the hope of getting easy coverage.
Charlie McCreevy has indicated that he is more than happy to "make arrangements" for those deputies to forfeit their wage increases if they feel they don't deserve them.
Drapier's view is that this is the lowest form of political discourse which brings politics into disrepute at a time when it needs to be defended, at the very least, by TDs.
Looking North, there is genuine concern in Leinster House about the outcome of next week's critical assembly elections.
Sinn Féin is confident of seat gains, and the rejectionist unionist camp could also grow, making a workable cross-community executive unlikely. In that sorry event the agreement itself provides for a review by the two governments, a depressing outlook by any measure.
In these last final days there is still an opportunity for pro-agreement leaders to transcend the tribalism and inspire sufficient numbers of voters to revisit the spirit of compromise and optimism which contributed to the original popular endorsement of the agreement.
In the case of David Trimble, Drapier longs for him to deliver the speech of his life to save the agreement and drag the reluctant and undecided moderate unionist voter over the line.
Finally, on a lighter note Drapier was pleased that the former PD leader, Des O'Malley, was honoured by the University of Limerick this week with a doctorate of laws.
In a wide-ranging address on international affairs the invited audience was reminded of his much-missed intellect, experience and originality.