HUMAN diseases are very sensitive. This Government now knows that, whether it is hepatitis C or CJD, you have to tread very warily.
Michael Noonan and Ivan Yates have failed to do that. One would have expected that Yates might have learned from Noonan's mistakes but that did not prove to be the case this week.
Instead of coming clean, Yates tried to brazen it out and came heavily unstuck when he told Des O'Malley in the Dail that he had never said he was in Dublin Airport for the signing of the protocol on beef exports to Russia.
This even though he had boasted to RTE viewers four days earlier that he was there and had fought a valiant battle for Ireland against all the odds.
Not surprisingly, Fianna Fail went for him bald-headed in its private members' motion. Ivan's reply to the debate on Thursday was far from sure-footed.
In trying to repeat that he had never misled anyone he simply dug the hole deeper to bury himself. The impression was given that once Wexford came off the Russian black list, Ivan might have relaxed.
The handling of the affair was so maladroit it is not surprising that some customers abroad for Irish beef are having their doubts. It is a clear case of a largely self-inflicted wound because the low incidence of BSE in Ireland now seems to get far more attention than an incidence which is 1,000 times greater in Britain.
As well as Ivan's poor handling of the situation, the Department of Agriculture is increasingly giving the impression of uncertainty in how it faces up to these kind of things.
The situation is not helped by the latest medical scientific report coming out of England during the week which suggests a greater degree of connection than was known up to now between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans.
Ivan's response is that he is not surprised at this: they had more or less expected it and the controls already in place can cope with it. But as he was frantically trying to defend the situation, Ivan had to announce three further cases had now come to light.
Michael Noonan is probably relieved that something is happening to take the spotlight from him. Drapier cannot foretell how all this is going to develop but BSE is one of these problems that looks as if it will not go away and may get worse rather than better.
We read during the week that the leaders of the three parties in Government had decided that October 1997 would be a good time to have a general election.
This could, of course, be a decoy but it might well be that this Government would conclude it might as well try to go to the very end of this Dail's term.
If it does, that would be unusual but the circumstances of the formation of this Government were themselves unusual and the Government only started halfway through the term of the Dail.
Drapier forecasts that if the election does not take place until well into 1997 there will be an increasing number of members announcing their retirement.
In recent weeks we have had Jimmy Leonard, Jim Mitchell and Ger Connolly. The longer the Dail continues the more likely it is they will be joined by others who will want to call it a day.
Drapier believes there will be several such. Being a member of the Dail is a tougher and more stressful and strenuous job than it was in the past.
Those who have served a long time feel that they have honourably earned the right to retire from the fray.
Mitchell's departure is probably the most significant in that Fine Gael will be hard put to hold his seat.
He is a man with a strong personal following in a part of Dublin where Fine Gael would not naturally command much support.
It is hard to believe the bail referendum is little more than a month away. It causes no stir whatever and will probably go through comfortably in a very low poll.
In a sense, what is more interesting are the referendums that are not taking place, namely, those on emigrants' votes and cabinet confidentiality.
The emigrants were not very excited at the prospect of electing people to Seanad Eireann and told the Government they could keep it. That apparently was the end of that.
The cabinet confidentiality question is more intricate. In spite of a clear undertaking by the Government on assuming office that it would change the effect of the Supreme Court decision by a referendum they have now got windy at the prospect.
They talk gravely about administrative and other problems but do not specify what is stopping them. Drapier could not follow the reference to constitutional problems. It does seem that changing the Constitution gets rid of a constitutional problem rather than creating one. Surely that is the whole point of a referendum.
It seems that this doctrine of absolute cabinet confidentiality is a bit of a moveable feast. From time to time members or former members of a government are quite happy to describe what went on there if it suits them. They invoke the Supreme Court case if it does not.
If two years ago it seemed right to change this rule, nothing has happened since that would indicate that it should not now be changed. Drapier feels the Government will come under increasing pressure to make a change.
In case we think the Supreme Court never makes a mistake, its decision on this matter certainly looks like one. The judges who took the opposite view seemed to have the more logical opinions. The decision as it now stands on cabinet confidentiality, if it is not changed, could become a sort of refuge of scoundrels.
Drapier heard Harry Whelehan argue during the week that this was what the people had decided in 1937. It is hard to feel that the people had any such requirement in mind in 1937. The topic is not mentioned at all in the Constitution and is only imported into it by inference.
Still, its nice to hear Harry going public again. But not in London, you notice.