Drapier agrees with Mary Harney and Charlie Flanagan when they say we should not talk ourselves into a jobs crisis over the 5,000 jobs lost in the high-tech sector or create an atmosphere which would discourage further investment.
Drapier knows full well there is no room and little hearing for gloom-and-doom merchants in this modern Ireland. He knows, too, that the IDA and other such bodies have earned their spurs these past few years and should be listened to now, and that none of the major economic soothsayers are saying other than that this is a temporary blip in an otherwise inexorable surge forward.
All this may be so, but Drapier has in the back of his mind the fact that no single economist forecast the boom and, that being so, how can we have such confidence in their capacity to get their forecasts right as the storm clouds and the ominous signs begin to gather?
Certainly Charlie Flanagan has a point - 5,000 jobs is an awful lot over a short period, 5,000 families, 5,000 mortgages affected and major disruption to the people involved.
And while Mary Harney has been upfront and has visited each of the major job-loss centres, the "special task force" formula, with the same worthy faces cropping up time after time, is beginning to wear a bit thin.
The trouble for Mary Harney, as it is for all of us, is that it is Boston and not Berlin which is calling the shots on this one. At this stage we simply don't know whether or not Alan Greenspan's interest cuts will kick-start the American economy back into boom, or at least back into growth.
We do know that the downturn in demand for information technology products and services will be arrested, but we don't know when, and in particular if, it will be in time to prevent thousands of further job losses here.
Drapier will not use the word "crisis", but the present spate of difficulties should bring home to us our own vulnerability to outside forces and a realisation that those who warn about the downside of a global economy do have a point.
But not much more than that, and Drapier suspects there are few enough who would want to reverse the process of the past decade or would have all that much faith in the capacity of the Genoa protesters to do a better job than has been done by the governments of recent times.
But the events of the past few months should be a reality check, especially for a Government which has claimed credit for all the successes while floundering about in its attempts to address some of the underlying infrastructural problems.
The Jim O'Leary report on the implementation of the National Development Plan made this clear most recently, and the Government seems incapable of taking hard decisions or showing leadership on the one issue crucial to continuing success, our future role within the EU.
That issue is for another day, but as time goes on Drapier is more and more convinced that Michael Noonan did all of us, including the Government, a favour by calling a halt to the forum on the EU, at least in its proposed form.
The European issue is one that calls for leadership but leadership from the government and parliament of the day. It deserves more than an expensive, time-consuming talking shop, in which both public and media will quickly lose interest and which will be dominated by the sound-bites and the hidden agendas of groups who rarely contest elections but behave as if they have some sort of God-given mandate.
The reality is that Nice was lost because the Government did not campaign for it. A divided and self-indulgent Cabinet lost sight of - and was allowed lose sight of - the doctrine of collective responsibility, with the result that many could not be bothered voting and many others gave the Government the answer its behaviour had earned.
But back to the present. It will be a difficult autumn and an even more difficult winter for the Government. The recent drop in inflation is likely to be reversed. The teachers have not gone away. The various benchmarking chickens will be coming home to roost.
Farmers are angry about cattle prices. The imminence of the election will make people edgy. The tribunals still have a few spectaculars in store for us. And, most of all, control of key aspects of our economy will be governed by forces over which we have neither control nor influence.
Does that mean, then, that Bertie Ahern will cut and run in early autumn, as some of Drapier's colleagues are now saying once more? Mind you, some of the same people have been predicting an election almost monthly since the formation of this Government.
Drapier still thinks not. The electoral arithmetic has not changed. The extra seats are still not there while a handful of losses are more likely. It will be a question of battening down the hatches in the hope of holding out until something, somewhere, turns up, and in the hope, too, that the opposition parties will fail to capitalise on the opportunities now opening up before them.
Meanwhile there was a sense this week that the SDLP's decision on policing was not just courageous but could well mark a turning point.
The SDLP, like all of us, has been too respectful of the Sinn Fein agenda, too ready to suspend its better judgement for fear of damaging the peace process, too buffeted by sections of the media who suspend all critical faculties when it comes to dealing with Sinn Fein.
And, as John Bruton pointed out, this has led to a situation where Sinn Fein alone is exempt from serious questioning, especially on its still-dubious paramilitary links, criminal connections and much more.
What we have seen in recent times is a deliberate and brazen rewriting of the history of the past 30 years. In this version the IRA atrocities disappear, their contempt for democracy is ignored and the inevitable success of Sinn Fein is assured.
The SDLP is cast in the role of the old Irish Party, a necessary step on the way to ultimate victory but one destined to disappear.
Those of us who know the SDLP know different. We remember the long, lonely and brave fight to preserve democracy and decency. We know the sacrifices and we respect the calibre of those involved.
It is time for the SDLP to fight back, and it is time for the parties down here, who share the same democratic values as the SDLP, to give more support than we have been giving.
Sinn Fein has been given every chance to make the transition to democratic politics. The Colombia affair raises just one more question about its democratic integrity but, one way or other, Drapier believes a strong SDLP is essential, not just for political sanity and decency in the North but on the island as a whole.