Drapier is beginning to wonder when we are going to see a little action on the legislation front, or at least begin to see the imprint of this new Government on legislation.
So far this session, apart from John O'Donoghue's one-section Interpretation Bill which we passed this week and which was a fire-brigade measure, we have seen precious little legislation from the new Government.
The Interpol Bill and the Air Navigation Bill which we have been working on were left on the stocks by the last crowd, as was the Codification of the Tax Laws, the Children's Bill and the Turf Development Bill. Apart from that, the stream of legislation from the Government has been almost non-existent.
Drapier is prompted to make this point because so very little has been happening in the Dail chamber these past few weeks and it would be good for us all to get involved in a bit of serious legislative work. It might even take our minds off other things.
Incidentally, Drapier thinks Feargal Quinn had a valid point this week when he complained that the flawed Fatal Offences Bill had been pushed through both Houses at unseemly speed. That still happens far more often than is necessary.
However, that is not to say we have been wanting for excitement. The consequences of the Mary McAleese victory are still reverberating and will continue to do so. There was a new spring in many a Fianna Fail step and a fair bit of gloating of a kind Drapier has not seen for some time.
It wasn't just the opposition which was at the receiving end, but the media in general, RT E and The Irish Times in particular, and, of course, good old Dublin 4. Really it's about time some body stood up for that muchmal igned section of our community.
It was all redolent of an earlier and not particularly happy age, though Drapier will be surprised if the trends of the presidential election voting transfer automatically to Dail election voting or even to the upcoming byelec tions, to which, in truth, nobody is looking forward very much.
Meanwhile, the main opposition parties, both in their own ways vulnerable after the election, moved in their separate ways to put the presidential election behind them. Fine Gael pointedly avoided internal recriminations; John Bruton made a firm purpose of amendment and clearly the message the party tried to put out was "least said, soonest mended". In Drapier's view it is a wise strategy, but perhaps easier said than done.
Fianna Fail is in a mood to put the boot in and keep it in, though in politics things can turn very quickly. They usually do.
Labour, meanwhile, is coming to terms with the post-Spring age. Drapier has no doubt Dick Spring was the greatest leader of the Labour Party in its 80-year history. He inherited a party on its knees, drained of pride and spirit. He gave it back its pride and a sense of purpose, often against the odds and in face of bitter internal opposition. He modernised it and made it the party of modernisation. He was on the brink of making it the second-largest party in the State.
He was a good and at times a great minister for foreign affairs; he was serious and professional in his conduct of government and he achieved a great deal. Then it all seemed to crumble, and Drapier has no doubt Dick Spring is right to go in his own time. He could have stayed on, but who could face for a second time the long process of rebuilding, the inevitable squabbles, the certain antagonisms and the sheer physical and mental slog of it all?
No, Dick Spring has made the right decision. Drapier has never seen him so relaxed, so much at ease with himself, as if he has had a huge burden lifted. This is not the end for Dick Spring, merely a new start, and wherever it leads Drapier wishes him well.
The Spring resignation has moved the Adi Roche debacle off the headlines and averted the post-mortems which would otherwise have been inevitable. But Drapier this weekend would like to say a further word to the presidential losers. Defeat in an election is a lonely and public experience. It takes guts to smile and keep smiling as Mary Banotti did, to keep the head high as Adi Roche did, to laugh and joke as Dana did or to show the stoic acceptance of Derek Nally.
With all the attention now focused on Mary McAleese, the other candidates are experiencing the loneliness, at times the blackness, of defeat, and Drapier wants to wish them all well.
Which brings Drapier to the Labour contest. He doesn't know the members of the electoral college and indeed if Drapier was devising an electoral college, this is not the one he would have constructed.
He would have gone for either a party-wide system of election or stuck with the traditional college of cardinals, the parliamentary party. The present system has, in Drapier's view, the worst of both worlds. Be that as it may, who will win? Drapier doesn't know.
The early smart money in here is on Brendan Howlin, and the only sense of momentum Drapier could detect this week seemed to be coming his way. However, Ruairi Quinn has been around a long time, he is no stranger to smoke-filled rooms, he has a good sense of timing and has never been less than street-wise.
The only clue we have had as to the temper of this electoral college was its behaviour on the nomination of Seanad candidates where it effectively rejected most of the high-profile "establishment" candidates. That's little help to us now, since both Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin are not just establishment candidates, they are the Labour establishment. Along with Dick Spring they have dominated the Labour Party for the past decade.
Once again we are little the wi ser, but whoever wins is going to have massive problems. A Spring tide like that of 1992 comes once in a lifetime, and Labour now finds itself without any clear agenda to offer the electorate for the next generation - in part a tribute to its own success in government when it got so much of its programme implemented.
Labour, like the PDs, needs a clear agenda if it is to make any real impact. The bigger parties can afford to be a little more vague and get away with it. In deed they run risks of internal dissension if they try to be too specific. Clarity of agenda is essential for Labour, and that will be the first task of the new leader. It will not be easy, but who ever said being Labour leader ever was easy? Ask Michael O'Leary.