Taxis, teachers, trains and terrible headlines. "Strikes, Strife and Gridlock" and "The Standstill State" being indicative examples. Angry citizens can't travel within the country or have acute difficulty getting to the airport to leave it.
A Government whose press statements are, as Ruairi Quinn put it, animated by the importance of social partnership is everywhere, it seems, embroiled in conflict. The trains are not running on time or at all, the teachers are in revolt, the planners and the clerical staff are working to rule and there is uproar in the taxi trade.
To add to the Government's woes the almost unbelievable saga of Century Radio continues to unfold at Dublin Castle. The manoeuvres engaged in to get "Radio Fianna Fail" on air are beyond anything suspected at the time.
At a time when the Government should be on the ropes, enter Austin Deasy to divert the focus. The move against John Bruton must have been music to the ears of Bertie Ahern and his besieged Ministers.
With the transport and industrial relations systems in chaos, hospital queues lengthening, house prices spiralling and parents irritated by the teachers' dispute the Government and individual Ministers ought to be feeling the pressure.
Instead, they watched in disbelief as the main Opposition party inflicted an untimely wound by its own hand.
As Bertie escapes the clutches of the taximen to Zagreb, Mary Harney is allowed to grasp at the opportunity for the PDs presented by Bobby Molloy's decision to deregulate at a stroke the taxi trade.
Mary has been through a bad time, and nothing revives her like the scent in her nostrils of a good populist issue. While Bertie prevaricated, Harney read the tea leaves suggesting that the public was outraged at the bullyboy tactics of some of the taximen.
As Fianna Fail was manifestly divided on the effect of Molloy's decision, Harney unashamedly sold it as a PD achievement on a par with her own decision to banish smog in Dublin. She made no attempt to shelter Fianna Fail from Opposition jibes that the taximen were misled and let down by Fianna Fail. If only she had more than four seats, she hinted, she would do the same to the publicans.
Whatever about the fevered creativity that gave us the "Celtic Snail" it was ironically John Bruton's consistent attack on the transport chaos that forced Molloy to make his decision. He didn't consult in advance, and it was noticeable that it was one ministerial decision where the ubiquitous Bertie didn't accompany the Minister for the public announcement.
In fact, Drapier was told that Bertie had left the Fianna Fail Parliamentary Party meeting with the impression that deregulation was not on the cards. Indeed, many Fianna Fail TDs openly include Bertie in the "Northside Five" who all along gave comfort to the taximen's leaders that their stranglehold on entry to the trade could continue.
Meanwhile in Galway, Frank Fahey had assured taximen in Bobby Molloy's backyard that any decision would affect Dublin only. And to think that members of the media thought Jackie Healy-Rae's efforts to ring-fence Kerry from the fallout was risible!
Senior Fianna Fail figures have now decided "to give this one to the PDs". Fianna Fail strategists believe that the PDs had been on the verge of extinction and that Fianna Fail stands to gain more in terms of badly needed transfer of votes from the continued existence of the PDs.
The Northside Five led by Ivor Callely and Noel Ahern, who impeded even moderate reforms, thus landing the taximen in the present mess, will now concentrate on behind-the-scenes pressure on Bobby Molloy and Charlie McCreevy to sweeten the pill through compensation.
How this can be done without creating a costly precedent for other deregulated sectors remains to be seen. For some reason generous tax relief seems to have less attraction for taximen than for the rest of us. Meanwhile, the PDs are happier than they have been for a long time, and Fianna Fail is determinedly facing both ways.
Two performances that caused discreet titters amid all the maelstrom were, first, that of the former judge Seamus Henchy, the former chairman of the IRTC who was distinctly unamused at being asked to help the Flood inquiry on the Century saga.
The second, omitted last week, was that of Dr Art Cos- grove before the Public Accounts Committee. Drapier was riveted to the monitor as the president of UCD sought to explain how the terms of operation of a subsidiary company of UCD established by top academics in the Commerce Faculty to market degrees in the Far East and elsewhere and which, in come cases, produced income for the academics larger than their formal salaries went largely undetected until an internal audit committee was established in the mid-1990s. Imagine the hilarity in the groves of academe if, say, politicians demonstrated the same enterprise.
The manner of publication of the recent IMS poll rained on the Fine Gael parade to launch their document, Plan for the Nation. The taxi tumult had a similar effect on Brendan Howlin's proposals for legislation for a Garda authority and Garda ombudsman which is in part derived from the work done by the Patten Commission.
The thrust of the Labour case appears to be that while the Garda Siochana has served the State well since its foundation, times have changed and there is no reason why the accountability that has permeated other institutions in Irish life should not also apply to the Garda.
Discounting the beauty-contest factor, none of the established parties can take comfort from the recent poll. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. No wonder Bertie thinks it would be dishonourable not to run his full term.