It seems that with the imminent departure of our President for Geneva and New York, an October election is likely for the vacancy in the Park. A few names have emerged, but the political parties are unlikely to put forward an aggrieved candidate - beg pardon, agreed candidate (there will be no shortage of aggrieved candidates afterwards) so the race is wide open.
In the interim between Mrs Robinson's September departure and the election, we are to have a presidential commission consisting of three people in high office. This wise constitutional provision rules out the possibility of a single individual going suddenly mad with the awesome power of the thing, and disturbing the peace of the Park with all-night cider parties, boozy barbecues on the front lawn, ghetto-blasters going day and night, family and hangers-on haunting the place, and general destruction of the dignity of the office, not to mention the paintwork.
The idea is that each of the three dignitaries - the Chief Justice, the Ceann Comhairle and the Seanad chairman - will temper any megalomaniac tendencies that may suddenly arise in an individual breast as the three occasionally privately contemplate (as they surely must) what it might be like to be sole monarch of the national demesne.
Security, under the control of the Garda, will be low-key but comprehensive. For example, each member of the power-sharing trio will hold a key to different locks on the Aras door, and all three keys must be simultaneously turned to gain entrance.
The Constitution dictates that the election for a successor to the President must be held within 60 days. We have yet to come to terms with what this lengthy deprivation will mean to the daily life of ordinary Irish people. Certainly it will not be easy. Trauma is inevitable, and large-scale counselling will be essential. Effectively we will be in the position of children deprived of their mother, and left in the hands of competent but largely uninterested minders. This may seem unfair to the three gentlemen babysitters (who will not even be paid for their trouble) and to Mrs Robinson herself, who - like any mother - is almost certain to feel perfectly normal pangs of guilt as she departs, leaving some three million of her loved ones behind. After all, as a nation we never really had a mother before we had Mary.
Tears will certainly flow, but we must be strong, and remind ourselves that she can hardly take us all with her to Geneva.
But it is of little comfort that would-be stepfathers and stepmothers are already limbering up in the wings and practising their terms of endearment.
The one advantage of the long delay in replacing our beloved President is that there will be none of the unseemly business that took place in Downing Street recently, with John and Norma making an ignominious exit out the back door almost at the very moment Tony and Cherie were triumphantly entering the front.
In the meantime I have been asked what will happen to the famous light in the window of the Aras when Mrs Robinson leaves. Will it be a case of "the light is on but there's nobody at home"?
I am not sure about that, but I do know there are exciting creative plans for Aras an Uachtarain while it remains empty. A radical young group of artists, whom I am not at liberty to name, has been commissioned to work on the building, and I gather that they first intend to drape the residence with an enormous black silk veil, to indicate mourning and loss.
A stunning series of back-lit pictures will also be projected on to the night sky, telling the tale of presidencies past, while uplifting military music by the Army No 1 Band will be transmitted from midnight to dawn by means of discreetly-installed speakers throughout the Park.
There is no truth, however, in the rumour that until a new president is elected, a moratorium is to be imposed on all discussion about the Famine, the diaspora, the recondite gymnastic art of "reaching out", and any kind of empowerment, however harmless.
Every possible step will be taken to ensure that the nation, however badly traumatised, is kept on a steady keel while awaiting its new president.