August 1969 was an especially wicked month. Of all the months of all the years for files to go "missing", August 1969 was certainly odd. The conspiracy theorists could scarcely be blamed for believing that the new millennium could be kicked off on a high note.
Charlie Bird, dejection in his voice, put an end to all that. The "missing files" were not "missing" after all.
And yet the story is distinctly odd. Nonetheless, Drapier will be surprised if the files yield up much which is revealing. Irish Cabinet minutes starkly record decisions only. And even Cabinet memoranda, while asserting a position and recording the sometimes contending views of ministers, rarely betray open conflict between ministers.
The most interesting revelation so far about 1969 is the counsel coming from the Department of Justice that the Lynch government should actively advocate splitting the IRA. The social revolutionaries should be cut away from the militarists.
This is the most substantial disclosure to date that some Fianna Fail ministers might have been concerned in the establishment of the Provisional IRA. At this remove, it seems curious that snuffing out the leftists was a higher priority than suppressing militarism.
If the belief in some quarters that there was an actual Cabinet decision to put the Irish Army into Derry is true, then surely that at least will be revealed? In that event, the revisionists may not be as kind to Lynch's memory as is the current disposition. Drapier is satisfied to leave it to the historians with the caveat that when Lynch was forced to act he did so resolutely.
Speaking of historians, Drapier hugely enjoyed the splendid biography by Oireachtas colleague Maurice Manning of James Dillon. One could hardly fail to be struck by how much the State has changed since the dreary decades of the 1940s and 1950s. Only a practising politician would note that the great orator never resided in his own constituency.
If Noel Dempsey has his way we will soon all - or those of us who survive in the planned elite 100 super-deputies - be able to enjoy the luxury of never having to set foot in our constituencies. The travails of having to engage with constituents will be relegated to the last century.
Drapier was pleased to hear the Labour environment spokesman, Eamon Gilmore, so effectively puncture some of Dempsey's populist nonsense. Gilmore queried why it was accepted as a normal part of the public policy process that men in sharp suits rub shoulders with ministers and senior politicians but poor people ought to be scorned for accessing their TD.
No matter what the savants in the universities or the media think, it is a fact that ordinary people don't know how to find their way around the system. They don't have the capacity to employ lobbyists to do it for them. The proposition that we should pay half the present number of politicians double their salaries is fundamentally anti-democratic and pandering to the worst kind of populism.
In any event, any self-respecting parliament worthy of the name has an irreducible minimum number of members if it is to provide an executive and function as a parliament.
Nor is there a demand for electoral reform any more than there was a demand for individualisation of tax bands, but both policies gel well with the evident new brash individualism.
Drapier enjoyed the speed with which the mandarins released some of the advices available to Charlie McCreevy. Usually requests for release are effortlessly parried until the Finance Bill is enacted. Clearly the mandarins want the word abroad that they are not responsible for the Budget debacle.
The release of the papers at least makes clear that not just Mr McCreevy but Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney have not a leg to stand on. The efforts by Mr McCreevy to claim that he hadn't been warned and by Mr Ahern to suggest somehow that he wasn't involved are blown out of the water, as Michael Noonan was quick to point out.
No self-appointed apologists can change the political reality now confronting the Government. Mr McCreevy has decided to stay and fight the terms of the Finance Bill. The Taoiseach has decided to appease the anger in the trade union movement to deliver a social contract. These objectives are incompatible.
Mr McCreevy knows that the Taoiseach was involved in his Budget and so it is difficult to see how, if the Finance Bill dilutes his main proposal, he can stay on as Finance Minister.
Drapier would not have forecast the appointment of Mike Allen as general secretary of the new Labour Party. Insofar as I can remember, he was associated neither with the old Labour Party nor the former Democratic Left party. For all of that, it is a shrewd appointment by Ruairi Quinn. It will send out a positive signal to many marginalised and community groups. Organising unemployed people is not an easy task and yet the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed achieved considerable successes in this regard, culminating in Mr Allen's presence at the negotiations for a successor agreement to Partnership 2000. Drapier has noted over the years the consistent quality of arguments landing on his desk from the INOU.
His appointment also seems to suggest a departure from the style of the Labour Party run by Dick Spring. Mr Quinn did promise a more democratic regime than was customary under Mr Spring's kitchen cabinet style.
Mr Allen's appointment may not be a reversion to the halcyon days of Brendan Halligan, when the general secretary was a powerful figure, but it does indicate a focus on organisation and administration which no political party can neglect.