Drapier: Me thinks the companero doth protest too much . . .
Yes, of course, our relations with South America are really, really important. And yes, of course, it's a good thing that Noel O'Flynn has met some foreigners that he seems to like. And yes, of course, the life cycle of salmon in the Andes is of vital concern to the people of our little island.
But given all of that, was it really wise for Noel to give a half-hour polemic in defence of his committee's trip to the southern hemisphere?
His extended apologia at this week's meeting of the committee left colleagues and the media both bemused and amused. Amused at Noel's destruction of the Spanish language and bemused by his evident belief that somebody somewhere would take him seriously.
Bottom line is this. As far as the public and the press are concerned, TDs plus long-haul travel equals junket. It doesn't matter what the reason for the trip might be. It doesn't matter whether you travel business or economy. It doesn't even matter if you survive on buffet lunches and cheap wine. Long-distance travel equals junket equals cheap and critical publicity equals bad news for guys like Noel who have to defend seats which have been suddenly rendered just a little vulnerable by the constituency revision.
Drapier's advice to Noel is simple enough. The people of Cork North Central didn't elect you to cavort with foreigners. Quite the contrary.
Foreign relations are best left to the experts - like the Minister of State in the Department of Foreign Affairs, one Deputy Conor Lenihan.
Drapier has opined previously on the matter of Conor. On the last occasion, Drapier's modestly expressed view that Conor was sort of mad brought howls of protest from the deputy's worthy defenders. This week's kebab remarks have brought Conor's protectors once more to the ramparts, this time to claim that Conor isn't racist.
To be fair, Drapier met nobody in the House this week that thinks that Conor is racist. Conor is quite articulate and even funny. Unfortunately for him his sense of humour is quirky and just a little juvenile. And it almost certainly isn't shared by most Turks.
Like almost everyone else Drapier is tired of all this aviation stuff. At least now we have a decision of sorts.
Or do we? To be sure the decision on the terminal seems real enough, even if it is laced with all kinds of conditions to keep the PDs onside.
But the decision on Aer Lingus? Drapier is far from convinced that we've heard the last of this argument.
In fact the Government decided to sell off Aer Lingus years ago.
Mary O'Rourke announced on December 14th, 1999, that the cabinet had made a formal decision to sell the airline. It never happened and the main reason it never happened is that an awful lot of Fianna Fáil TDs, including several ministers, simply don't want to sell Aer Lingus.
Sure it has something to do with jobs and votes in north Dublin but it also has to do with the fact that Aer Lingus is by far the most popular of the publicly-owned utilities. Popular not least because it's ours, it's Irish.
Nobody much cares if the ESB is taken over by EDF (the French electricity crowd) but the idea that Aer Lingus could be taken over by the Brits really grates with Fianna Fáil.
Jim Glennon was trotted out during the week to give the line, but Jim knows well that most Fianna Fáilers cannot abide the notion that we will all be spending a lot of time in the future in whatever English hub our British masters deem appropriate for travel to our fair green isle.
A few years ago the annual bash of the Greens would have rated barely a couple of paragraphs in the national press. Those days are over, at least for the moment. This year's affair merited front-page headlines, two pages of detailed coverage, an op-ed piece and an editorial in this newspaper alone!
The big reason for the coverage was the decision of the party to go it alone at the next general election. From the selfish point of view of the Greens, the decision makes perfect sense and it can hardly have come as a surprise. Or could it?
Whether he was surprised by the decision or not, Trevor Sargent made a woeful job of interpreting it to the press. Drapier has rarely heard a worse series of interviews than those given by Trevor after his conference.
At one stage he seemed to say that he agreed with the decision to go it alone. Then he seemed to say that the decision didn't mean what everybody thought it meant. He concluded by saying that if it did mean what people thought it meant, then he wouldn't operate it anyway. At least we know where we stand. Don't we?
The Green debate is a foretaste of what should be a decent bit of political sport next weekend when Labour meets in conference in Tralee to mull over a similar dilemma.
Drapier senses a grim determination on the part of most Labour deputies to follow the leader, even if a lot of them are getting increasingly worried about where it might all end up. The dinosaurs of the left such as Michael D and Emmet Stagg seem to be sitting this one out, while the former Stickies are lining up to give renewed expression to the grá for Fine Gael which they developed during the Bruton government.
Opposition to Pat Rabbitte is from a diverse crowd including Brendan Howlin, Tommy Broughan, Kathleen Lynch and Derek McDowell. It will hardly be enough to spoil Pat Rabbitte's weekend in Kerry.