THE dreaded "A" word is back. Abortion is again on the agenda. John O'Donoghue's unsolicited and unexpected remarks last Saturday were a godsend to the antiabortion, anti-divorce, anti-contraception and anti-everything-else lobby which was beginning to wilt into irrelevance. It has a new lease of life and there are very few in Leinster House who envy seeing it on the war-path again.

What's the betting that John O'Donoghue will get the papal award or knighthood denied to Mary Robinson? While O'Donoghue is clearly trying to milk the backwoods (to the fury of many of his Fianna Fail colleagues) Drapier's reading of the scene is that the public is as fed up as deputies are with the saga of moralistic controversies to which we have been subjected for so long.

Bertie Ahern is trying to discipline his troops because he, like others, realises what O'Donoghue did is counterproductive. He also realises Fianna Fail has most to lose by an upsurge of religiously fundamentalist candidates. The streets of Dublin, city and suburbs, are a very different place from the heather-clad hills of south Kerry.

There appear to be three basic [options. Firstly, to have yet another referendum; secondly, to introduce some form of legislation; and thirdly, to do nothing at all. Drapier's guess is that option three is the one that will prevail.

Whoever is in government, now or in the future, is likely to come to the pragmatic conclusion that whatever criticism there may be for doing nothing, it will be only a fraction of the criticism that will be engendered by doing something.

Furthermore, many around here have long since concluded that if nothing had been done in 1983, abortion would still be illegal but we would have avoided all the problems that have arisen since, political and legal.

At that time, both Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald succumbed to pressure groups. We have all paid the price since. Not the least of that price was paid by the unfortunate Miss X, who found herself injuncted.

In the course of the general election campaign, Drapier cannot see any of the parties wanting to make abortion an issue, but it is equally likely that some of them at least will be unable to prevent a few of their candidates doing so.

LEINSTER House opinion seems to be hardening on the likelihood of a pre-summer election. Drapier, however, feels some of that may be wishful thinking by deputies who are becoming increasingly tense from pre-election nerves and would like to get the thing over with quickly.

They instinctively think that those who will actually make the decision feel the same way as themselves. There is no evidence of that. Messrs Bruton, Spring and De Rossa might he quite happy to stay there as long as they can and in particular to stay there while they are behind in opinion polls. John Major has succeeded in pushing his election out to the latest possible date. It could happen here.

Most selection conventions have now been held and, of course, what makes deputies particularly nervous is the fact that candidates running with them, who are not outgoing, are getting busy on the ground.

But not everybody panics. As befits a sporting and agricultural country, it was quietly arranged during the week that parliamentary questions to the Minister for Agriculture, which were due to be, taken next Tuesday, would be put back for a week or two. After all, next Tuesday is Champion Hurdle day at Cheltenham. Ireland has not entirely lost its sense of priorities.

We all got a letter during the week from the latest tribunal asking us if we had ever got money from Ben Dunne. Most of us will have to reply that regrettably we did not, but the letters appear to have gone to all former members over the past 10 years also. There will be particular interest in the replies of some of the former members.

A few weeks ago tribunal sources were saying they had almost no documents to work on. Now Dunnes is talking about the possibility of having to produce up to 40,000 pieces of paper. There will be great reading there. The more one thinks about it, the harder it is to see how a general election can be held until the various large questions arising out of the Dunne payments are resolved.

John Bruton is certainly doing his best to clear the decks by his action in forcing Michael Lowry to resign from Fine Gael on Thursday. This was expected, but many were surprised at the fact that it came relatively quickly. There was a lot of pressure on Bruton from other Fine Gael deputies, especially in Dublin, to kick Lowry out. The official reason for this decision related to tax difficulties and Lowry's alleged failure to resolve them. One would have thought the tax difficulties are only one aspect of the matter.

LOWRY may stand as an Independent. That may be easier said than done. Not the least of his difficulties as an Independent may be the question of finance. To get elected as an Independent in a rural constituency is an expensive undertaking. It may prove a major problem for someone with tax difficulties.

The indications that he might rejoin Fine Gael immediately after the election, if he were elected as an Independent, would not greatly please some of the Fine Gael candidates elsewhere who want him gone for good.

It certainly promises to be an interesting year. Expect the unexpected.