Drapier: Drapier has been observing the parliamentary performance in the Dáil of the six Green TDs. Their sartorial style (all men incidentally) is a clear ideological giveaway.
The suit, collar and tie, with optional waistcoat faction, are the "realos", led by Trevor Sargent, John Gormley and Dan Boyle. The open-necked shirt or polo faction are the "fundis", with Ciaran Cuffe, Paul Gogarty and Eamon Ryan. Drapier invites readers to keep a note of this and see just who becomes a minister in any future non- Fianna Fáil-led coalition.
Last week, the Tánaiste, Mary Harney, was in the House to take the Order of Business on Thursday, now the Taoiseach has been let off the hook by Labour's cute deal with Fianna Fáil. Drapier thought, wrongly, that she was there to represent the Government, and so prevent Cardinal Michael Smith acting as the Minister for Fianna Fáil's defence and occupying the front trench!
Not so, she was only in the House because she had an Employment Permits Bill to deal with. Has ever a woman disimproved and got so disconnected as firebrand Mary, Joan of Arc of the Haughey-led Fianna Fáil Party of the 1980s? Her lack of interest is palpable. Her weary responses are so energy sapping that it can only be a matter of time before she assigns the job to Michael McDowell.
Forget about Tom Parlon, he is too delighted with himself as the Government's estate agent. Drapier has been told that he has even been overheard discussing property deals with, of all people, John Ellis, in the middle of the Dáil chamber. McDowell will have no trouble, when the succession comes, right after the local elections next year.
Pity poor Mildred Fox and the other Fianna Fáil Independents such as Jackie Healy- Rae, James Breen of Clare, and Paddy McHugh of Galway East. They were made redundant the night they got elected and now their real base, a county council seat, is going to be "cullenised" by the ex-PD Minister for Environment and Local Government, Martin Cullen.
Drapier, who knows the rough and tumble of democratic politics, has little sympathy for disloyal party adventurists who buck the cumainn and refuse to accept the result of the selection convention. Much as he agrees with the criticism of John McGuinness about the stranglehold the PDs have on this Government, he is pleased that, at least, the Fianna Fáil party is liberated from the blackmail of ex-members which existed between 1997 and 2002.
Enda Kenny is slowly getting better at Leaders' Question Time. But, sometimes, it is like watching paint dry. Drapier wonders, at least for the sake of democracy, when will the Opposition get its act together.
Clearly, Pat Rabbitte has emerged as the most effective and popular leader in the last opinion poll. But that matters for nothing until such time as Sargent, Kenny and Rabbitte put a deal together and present it to the electorate at the beginning of the next general election.
Drapier is not looking forward to the local and European elections in 14 months' time. He expects that a three-party electoral platform will be seen soon after that.
Drapier's provincial colleague Jim Higgins is running for the European Parliament, secure now that at least the Oireachtas has agreed to indemnify himself and young Howlin in their legal case against the Garda. There remains a question mark over whether Charlie McCreevy will facilitate the Oireachtas in making the money available, but in principle the deal has been done.
The Senate was noisy last Wednesday in endorsing that view, despite Mammy O'Rourke's scattered management of the Order of Business. Higgins will be a loss to the Oireachtas, but John Bruton from Leinster and Eoin Ryan from Dublin will join him in the Strasbourg parliament when the votes are counted. The Ryan and Andrews families are engaging in a unique bit of political nepotism. Niall retires to make way for Eoin who in turn will leave Dublin South East for young Chris Andrews at the next general election, who co-incidentally is a son of Niall and a first cousin of Barry Andrews TD, who, of course, is a son of David Andrews.
Fianna Fáil has no problem with dynasties provided they are republican dynasties! And what about the Real Republicans, the political cousins in Sinn Féin?
Like many of old Leinster House occupants, Drapier thought that the arrival of the famous five, led by the ex-banker with divided loyalties, Ó Caoimhghín, would rattle the cage.
What a let down. It just goes to show that you cannot always maintain the energy of the physical force tradition when you trade in the Armalite for the Armani suit. Arthur Morgan has less guile and charm than Dicken's artful dodger; Seán Crowe is like a failed trader from the Bull Ring in Dublin's Meath Street, where he would meet many of his Dublin South West constituents.
As for Martin Ferris, has there ever been a more ineffectual, harmless and inarticulate Kerryman, not to mention Anguish Ó Snodaigh whose heavily manufactured working-class Dublin accent is nearly as bad as his stifled and cumbersome command of the first Official language. Drapier wonders, now, why the likes of the Cruiser and Paddy Cooney worried so much about their arrival.
Joe Higgins and Michael D. are having a good war, so far. Bush and Blair have unleashed the forces for regime change in more places than Baghdad. Here at home, the Taoiseach's equivocations and cowardice is not to be compared with the Chief's studied ambiguity during what we euphemistically called the Emergency between 1939 and 1945. Bertie is being found out by his own and they don't like it. John McGuinness speaks for many of Drapier's ambitious friends in Fianna Fáil, particularly bright ministerial talent such as Sean Fleming, Pat Carey, Jim Glennon and Michael Moynihan. They look aghast at the continued, if not permanent, presence of Liam Aylward, Síle de Valera, Jim McDaid and John Browne, to mention only some, and wonder do they have to get rid of Bertie himself to achieve a bit of regime change.
Finally, Labour attempted to embarrass Fianna Fáil with its burial of the Freedom of Information Act during the course of extended voting in the House this week. The best, however, Labour could do was to raise a spontaneous laugh when Pat Rabbitte described the Taoiseach's tortured excuses for the burial of the FOI Act as being similar to the performance of Comical Ali's performance, as Saddam Hussein's erstwhile Minister for Information has now been called, on the streets in Baghdad.