THE foreboding during last week's extended debate on the Northern Ireland ace process (or what's left of it) was replaced this week by a sense of helplessness.
While very little time was, spent on the Northern situation, it wasn't very far from the thoughts of the House. On Tuesday the Taoiseach took about 20 Opposition questions on the subject and dealt with them in little over a quarter of an hour. Even the Opposition seemed to adopt the stance that "the less said the better".
On Wednesday's Order of Business, the Ceann Comhairle gave some leeway to Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney when they tried to question the Taoiseach, but we got no more than a rehash of the previous days contributions.
Fianna Fail seem unwilling and indeed unable to move away from Proinsias De Rossa's recent predicament. Like a dog with a juicy bone, this week's proceedings were littered with jibes at Proinsias.
For instance, on Tuesday's Order of Business, Bertie Ahern referred to the upcoming Civil and Public Service Union strike. He reminded the Taoiseach that the last time there was such a strike was 10 years ago when Fine Gael and Labour were last in government.
He asked what was being done to solve the strike and threw in at the end of his contribution the comment that it was ironic that the unions were striking against the Government embargo on public service recruitment while, at the same time, Minister de Rossa was collecting around him his groups of advisers.
Proinsias has paid dearly for his desire to encircle himself with advisers, researchers and assistants and when this Government comes to an end, he may look back ruefully on his decision in this regard.
Eric Byrne and Kathleen Lynch the Democratic Left duo, seem to have gone to ground during Proinsias's predicament, though Kathleen made a feeble attempt at returning insults to Joe Walsh during a beef debate. Democratic Left won't live this one down too easily. Labour especially was not hiding its delight at Democratic Left's difficulties.
THE strike itself didn't seem to cause much disruption to Wednesday's proceedings. It will be interesting to see if any retribution will be dished out to those who passed the picket (or those who stayed in the House from early morning to avoid the pickets).
On Tuesday's Order of Business, we were granted some rare entertainment by the one and only Ger Connolly. Readers may not be too familiar with him, but Ger has his own style and he used this to its full. In his efforts to raise the possible job losses in Butler Engineering in his constituency of Laois/Offaly. Every rule in the book was thrown out by Ger, who is one of the longest standing members of the House, something which tends to give him some leeway on matters like this.
There was extended laughter all round about the way in which Deputy Connolly raised the issue. When the matter died down and the next speaker rose to raise another issue, Dick Spring was heard to say "and now for something serious". Shortly after, Brian Cowen, who is a constituency colleague of Ger Connolly (and no doubt just as interested in Butler Engineering), seized on the Tanaiste's remarks and said while Mr Spring may not regard the Butler Engineering situation as serious, he did. Nasty!
It is obvious the sores created in the fall of the Labour/Fianna Fail Government are still hurting.
With all his years of experience, Drapier feels that by now he can smell major problems in the offing when they are not that obvious to others. Drapier's nose is again twitching in regard to another smouldering issue and his advice to Mervyn Taylor is to act quickly and decisively. He is referring to the proposal by the Minister for Equality and Law Reform regarding Equal Status Legislation.
This is the legislation which the publicans (particularly) feel will hamper their right to refuse entry to undesirables to their premises. Various groups representing the disadvantaged are pushing the Minister to proceed as he originally intended. This issue has the potential of blowing up in his face if he does not handle it properly.
The word is out that some obligation will be placed on the publican or shop owner to justify any action whereby they would refuse service. The publicans are leading the charge against this and are "very hot under the collar" about what they see as an intrusion on their fundamental rights.
Nobody for one minute in here questions the good intentions of Minister Taylor, but a lot of his colleagues on all sides wonder if, by bringing forward this legislation, he is "living in the real world". The Minister cannot say he wasn't warned!
There was some extremely adverse comment on the apparent spending by Aer Lingus of £8 million on its campaign to change its logo. Quite apart from changing the livery and hardware to take into account the new logo, we were treated to full page ads in all the national newspapers proclaiming the change.
Drapier heard a number of Government deputies muttering that this type of expenditure sent out all the wrong signals, particularly to the nursing organisations which are, it is generally accepted, entitled to a fair deal on their increased pay claim.
While the stock answer given is that the Minister is not responsible, it is generally accepted amongst his Government colleagues that Minister Michael Lowry should intervene.
Drapier feels the Minister could make a name for himself(!) if he was to act on this. Mind you, his exploits in nabbing the mugger will help to further rejuvenate his image. No doubt his PR people were working overtime on this. WHILE there is still no definite word as to when the by elections in Dublin West and Donegal North East are to take place, there is plenty of speculation as to what might happen.
The main topic of interest in Dublin West will be how well will Brian Lenihan jnr do in his late father's constituency, while in the Donegal by election the speculation will be on the Fianna Fail/ Blaney camp battle.
However, from what Drapier can gather, some surprising support may go to Militant Labour candidate Joe Higgins in Dublin and Sinn Fein's Pat Doherty in Donegal, particularly if, in the latter case, the rift between Fianna Fail and the Blaneyites is not patched up.
The major parties may not be very happy to push ahead with these by elections but Drapier warns that previous experience shows that elections delayed mean bad results.
Some sections of the print media have recently given deputies and senators a hard time, mainly on the issue of expenses. Much was made of the extra Budgetary provision in this regard, making out that we were coining it, and yet the contrary is true.
The fact is that we are no better off now than before the Budget. To cap it all, we got abused by an evening paper for supposedly being apathetic to the Northern Ireland debate. Deputies nearly came to blows because of their desire to get on the record just because we all didn't stay glued to our seats in the chamber for the entire three days debate, we were subjected to ridicule. Life is tough when one is a TD!