PAT Upton's tragic death shocked and saddened the House and in its own way put some of the recent alarums and excursions into perspective. Many tributes have been paid to Pat, all of them merited, as both Houses united in sympathy and a real sense of loss.
There is a strange chemistry about at times like this. It is less than a year since Hugh Coveney's death and the sense then, as now, of a good person taken cruelly before their time was palpable. Pat Upton had no enemies in here, only friends, and this in spite of his directness, his straight-talking, his impatience with the new political correctness and his hatred of pretence.
He was very much in the mould of his great mentor, the late Frank Cluskey. His wit was different, but just as lethal and never to be underestimated. Most of all, Pat was a politician who always stayed close to the people, working tirelessly for those he represented, always quietly and usually to good effect. He will be missed as a good friend and a decent colleague.
But politics, as people point out, can be a cruel trade and in Drapier's view John Dardis was right to castigate RTE for the insensitivity of its coverage of Pat Upton's death when, just hours after Pat had died, Ruairi Quinn, visibly shocked and devastated, was asked about Labour's by-election plans. Ruairi handled it well, but there was something crass about it.
Most of us had gone home before The Irish Times poll came in, but Drapier suspects nobody will be all that surprised. The key figure for Drapier was the drop in Fianna Fail's core vote. On that figure an overall majority would be out of the question, but more ominous is the trend away from the party and Government.
There is no incentive here for an early election and every reason for Bertie Ahern to keep his government together. And Des O'Malley still remains the PDs' best asset.
The problem, however, is that when things start going wrong, everything goes wrong. The nurses issue - which most people thought safely parked - has come back with some real menace, while the news from Eurostat has thrown the Government's strategy into disarray, with little prospect of any easy way out.
The timing was not good news for the Government parties, with the European and local elections looming ever closer. Pat the Cope Gallagher was the first to cut loose, willing to jettison Clare and Kerry, which happen to be in Munster, in the hope of securing aid for his own Connacht-Ulster.
All politics are local, as they say, and we can expect more of the same, much more, and it won't always be a pretty sight.
Drapier keeps being asked if this Government will last and like everybody else he simply doesn't know. For the moment little enough seems to be going the Government's way. As Drapier said recently, the signs of decay are all round. Even Bertie Ahern's great escape on the passport donations last week is less clear-cut and less comprehensive than Government handlers would have us believe.
There are still some very awkward questions to answer and the PDs' early and enthusiastically unreserved embrace is already looking a little premature.
In a way it is all down to the tribunals. If the Government only has to deal with the normal wear and tear of politics - euro funding, the health services, cock-ups in the justice system, pay deals and the like - then it will go the full distance, or as near as makes no difference. There are no real policy differences between the parties and the Independents have signed on.
The tribunals are what count. In passing, Drapier is not the only person in here baffled by the increasingly odd way the Flood tribunal is running.
The adjournments are allowed to drag on and on, and now when the judge gets annoyed - and yes, he was provoked - the whole show is shut down after a brief sitting on Wednesday and completely on Thursday. The way things are going it could yet rival the beef tribunal in terms of time and cost, and certainly the public are right to be angry at the display of self-indulgence on show.
Ultimately, however, it is the content which will matter. Eyebrows were raised in here when word got out that Ray Burke was contemplating a deal. Most people felt Ray Burke would go down with the ship rather than implicate others. But Ray Burke's life has been a living hell these past months, with no prospect of any improvement in sight, and should he feel it necessary to do a deal in order to minimise his own risk it could make life very uncomfortable for survivors of the class of '89 and, indeed, the class of '79.
Again, who could have foretold the bizarre behaviour of George Redmond? Mr Redmond is not facing a rosy future or the cosy retirement for which he so carefully planned. Drapier knows no more than anyone else, but the one point of agreement here is that his options are narrowing - and if one person knows some of what happened, when it happened, where it happened and who was involved it is Mr Redmond.
There are other intriguing possibilities ahead. The Taoiseach and Dermot Ahern will probably have to answer questions about Dermot Ahern's visit to London, what he was told by "Junior" Murphy and what he reported back to the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach will probably have to tell us what questions he asked Mr Burke.
And much more.
And of course outside that tribunal there is still the business - the unfinished business - of Padraig Flynn and Tom Gilmartin. There is Charles Haughey's forthcoming court appearance in relation to obstruction of the McCracken tribunal.
And these are only the things we know about. Drapier has always said that tribunals once started take on a life of their own.
That is emphatically true of the present brace and if this Government is to fall it will be because of something nobody has expected emerging from Dublin Castle with sudden and devastating consequences. But again, as Drapier has cautioned, nothing in politics is inevitable.