There are a number of big questions around this week. The most pressing one obviously concerns the nurses' strike. The question is not whether it will happen, but whether the Government, or more specifically Bertie Ahern, will hold his nerve when it does.
Drapier has great admiration for the guts shown so far by Charlie McCreevy and Brian Cowen. They have been direct and reasonable in face of opponents whose demands seem to change with each passing day.
It may not be popular to say it, but Drapier believes that McCreevy and Cowen have played a straight bat on this issue all along and have been easy targets for media and political bashing. Drapier also has to say that some aspects of the nursing leadership seem to him to be flaky and he is still not sure what the central issue is.
Both McCreevy and Cowen are a cartoonist's delight, and each has paid the price for his straight talking these past few weeks. And each knows that no matter what happens he is on to a hiding to nothing and each is expendable should the need arise.
That is why the spotlight will soon shift from them to Bertie Ahern. The question each has to ask is whether, when the going gets rough - and it will - they will still have their Taoiseach's full support. Past experience is less than fully reassuring on this issue, as they both well know.
But one way or other each has enhanced his reputation for straight talking and political toughness. Hopefully some sanity will prevail before Tuesday, because otherwise we are going down a road which will see tragedy and death.
And all for what?
Drapier wishes he knew.
Then there is the Partnership for Peace mess. If there was a bad way to handle this issue the Government has gone that way. For a start there was never any need to give the pre-election commitment on a referendum. Nobody was asking for it at the time, and in Drapier's experience the issue never once surfaced during the entire election campaign. But somebody in Fianna Fail headquarters obviously thought it was a good idea, especially since Fine Gael seemed vulnerable on the whole neutrality question. The days have long gone when election commitments can be dismissed as mere empty formulae and people today take a dim view when commitments solemnly given are not honoured. Drapier believes we should have a referendum. Had there been one he would have campaigned and voted Yes and he believes that if the issue were properly explained and if Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were backing it, the result would have been a decisive endorsement of Government policy. But by promising and then not having a referendum the Government has ensured that many people will rightly feel cheated and that the whole issue will leave a bad taste behind it, a sense of being deceived. Dick Roche and John Browne are not being cranks when they highlight this fact and are reflecting a genuine anger on the part of the people who don't like being taken for granted.
Of course, the whole thing has been a godsend for some of the Independents. It is just the issue on which they can flex their muscles, show that they can't be taken for granted, that they are no mere lobby fodder for the Government, and so on and so on.
It helps that Fine Gael is supporting the Government and that Fianna Fail will have a whipped vote. In other words there is no danger of a Government defeat, so it's quite easy to flex the muscles and make great sounds. It is called throwing a shape but in truth it is not fooling anybody and nobody is taking it very seriously.
Then this week we had the John Ellis stuff. Charlie Bird's supply of information from the bowels of NIB seems to be inexhaustible and must be making plenty of people uncomfortable at what may yet come.
John Ellis's troubles had been widely known in here at the time. Drapier remembers the rumours in the 1980s and indeed the sense of near-certainty that there was no way back for him and that we could be facing an unwanted by-election.
Drapier felt it to be unfair at the time that bankruptcy could cost a person a seat to which they were fairly elected, and he saw it as something of an anachronism. He had heard stories of others being bailed out by colleagues who did not want a by-election, but then suddenly the Ellis rumours stopped and the pressure was off.
Now we know why. And the story does not read well. Another load of manure dumped on the body politic. The impression of NIB as a cavalier, if not a cowboy, outfit during those years is reinforced by this week's revelations.
But then they may say - and who is to contradict them?- that they were behaving in the public interest, helping to stabilise a tottering government and doing so at the behest of some of the highest in the land. Drapier is sure that this is how the write-off was represented to the bosses in Australia.
Drapier wondered a year ago how many more revelations our battered public could take. There certainly appears to be no end to them. There are still further questions to be asked about the leader's allowance, about the Lenihan medical fund, and about Padraig Flynn and the political donations, and much more to come from Flood and Moriarty.
The strange thing, however, is how little of this is surfacing on the doorsteps in the current byelection. The apathy, at least as far as Drapier can see, is massive and the turnout will be low.
Drapier has noticed the odd edge and the occasional flash of anger at the doorstep, but little more. It may be the public is keeping itself to itself for the moment, but like the dog that did not bark Drapier is finding the silence that little bit ominous. It may be that when the public does take stock and makes up its mind everybody will be in for a major shock.
And finally this week, a new low in journalism, with the tabloid treatment of a respected colleague on an issue that was of no public interest. The treatment came from the lower ends of both the O'Reilly and Murdoch stables, and the irony was not lost on Drapier. It is Mr Murdoch who banned any coverage in his papers of the way he ditched his wife and traded her in for a younger model while Dr O'Reilly for his part was quick enough to run to the courts when this paper mentioned the Ansbacher lists. And these same people will now come to us asking us to change the libel laws. Telling us how their freedom is being fettered by the current antiquated laws, how expensive it all is and asking us to liberate them. After this week's performance they can forget about even trying.