It has been said these days that Charlie McCreevy and his colleagues couldn't have picked a better time to be in Government, given that the coffers are bulging with money. John Bruton and Co, it has been suggested, must be kicking themselves for handing this over to their opponents.
Yet, taking a look at the situation as objectively as possible, it would appear that the Government may be a victim of our booming economic success in that there is no way that it can satisfy all the demands.
The list seems to be endless, whether it's farmers, nurses, hospital waiting lists, traffic gridlock, house prices, people with disabilities etc. There is hardly a news programme these days without a pressure group making a call on the £1 billion extra tax the Minister for Finance is supposed to have.
Drapier feels that the Government has not significantly dampened down expectations to stop this and that, all in all, it makes for an interesting run-up to the Budget in December and thereafter.
Drapier previously forecast that the division of the State into regions for EU funds would cause the classic urban-rural divide, but this debate, to a certain extent, has died down for the time being. However, no one properly grasped the extent of the division which manifested itself with the farmers' protest which erupted this week on the streets of Dublin.
This was clearly illustrated by the divergent views taken in public, even in the Labour Party. The outspoken MEP, Bernie Malone, condemned the farmers for blocking her city. Her colleague, Senator Pat Gallagher, supported their protest. The debate then deteriorated with Peter Cassells, general secretary of the ICTU, condemning what he saw as bully-boy tactics.
Matters went from bad to worse with Proinsias De Rossa apparently condemning the "whingeing farmers", even going as far as referring to his comments when a government minister that farmers were "rolling in it."
In the long run this urban-rural divide is not doing anyone any good, and Drapier feels that both sides should back off. Drapier would have a view that farmers tend to talk up crises to such an extent that the non-farmer feels that they are constantly crying wolf.
That so many of them protested on Wednesday must clearly show that there are difficulties. However, Drapier is not sure that most of the population should put up with - or indeed bail out - non-viable farm (or any other) businesses.
The extension of the family income supplement to farmers is now the catchcry. Drapier noted that this has previously been given only to PAYE workers and has a good idea why it has not been extended to the self-employed, including farmers.
Thinking this out reminds Drapier about the story regarding the PAYE shop assistant whose child could not qualify for an educational maintenance grant, whereas the child of his self-employed boss could.
The CSO figures apparently show that farmers have the largest disposable incomes in the country, live in the biggest and newest houses, and own more cars and phones than their urban counterparts. If this is the case, then surely a high proportion of the 40,000 or so who turned up in Dublin on Wednesday are not in great difficulties.
But some of them must not be "rolling in it."
There was much comment this week about the resignation of Conor Cruise O'Brien from the UK Unionist Party. While some of David Trimble's Ulster Unionists were revelling in the discomfiture of Bob McCartney's UKUP, this flowed over across the Border to Leinster House.
While there has been much media comment in recent years about Conor Cruise O'Brien's thoughts, Drapier feels that not too many people in here paid much attention to him. It is generally felt that his thought processes tended to meander from one extreme to the other.
He obviously could not bear the fact that the UUP's Michael McGimpsey held up a copy of the newspaper article about his memoirs behind Bob McCartney, as he was speaking in the Assembly chamber this week.
Insult was added to injury when, of all people, Republican Sinn Fein's Ruairi O Bradaigh stood up to state that Dr O'Brien was merely articulating a view which he, Mr O'Bradaigh, had postulated since 1969.
The differing attitudes between Leinster House and the British parliament again came to the fore with the resignation of the Welsh Secretary, Ron Davies. By now readers will know that he resigned (some people would say far too quickly) because of a mugging incident in a London park.
The tendency in Ireland when public figures get into difficulty is to brazen it out, but not so in Britain. Many questions still remain to be answered as to why someone as high-profile as Davies would resign because he was robbed. His damage-limitation resignation may not be enough to prevent the tongues wagging more.
Drapier wonders if the Irish experience (and practice) of putting the head down in such difficulty might not have been a better tactic for Davies, in that such actions tend to engender sympathy the longer the speculation goes on.
With great fanfare, at least in the tabloids earlier this week, that paragon of virtue, Joe Higgins, announced to us all how, true to his word, he had divested himself of a large portion of his salary to "deserving" causes and how he called on the rest of us to do likewise.
It was only when Drapier read the small print that he realised that the deserving cases were none other than the anti-water charges campaign (which helped to get him elected in the first place) and his own political party. Drapier wonders if the £12,000 given to his party is on top of the £25,000 expenses paid by the Oireachtas (i.e. the taxpayer) to the same minority political party.
By any objective reasoning, the Socialist Party is not a deserving cause. Drapier wonders when these people will ever learn.