`You said the other day this outfit will go the distance," snarled one of Drapier's gloomier colleagues as he watched Jackie Healy-Rae, oiled and coiffured, talking to yet another television camera on the Leinster House plinth.

"Well, it doesn't look much like it to me," continued the gloomy one.

"This Independent lot look shakier and flakier by the day, and if ever a crowd were in danger of talking themselves into an unwanted election it's this crowd. The whole thing has gone to their heads."

The friend continued as Jackie moved through the glare of the television lights to the quiet of the radio microphone. And there were still three newspaper reporters poised, notebooks in hand, waiting to talk to him.

"It's all your man's fault," said the friend, pointing to the glistening head. "That fellow can't see an ante but he has to up it. And that upsets the other Independents, and more to the point, upsets their supporters, and then they come with their shopping lists, one demand more strident than the other. It's all going to end in tears. Mark my words."

Drapier listened and took some heed. His friend is a backbencher and knows at first hand the frustration of seeing Jackie Healy-Rae get things that he and others have been refused over the years. And Jackie is not a man to keep quiet about his achievements. The salt is there to be rubbed in, and no better man than Jackie to do it. And John O'Donoghue is not the only one to feel the sting.

Drapier agreed that things have changed. For the first time there is the hint of real danger to the longterm stability of this Government. It's only a start and in no way is it inevitable, but danger there is and, if things keep on going as they are it could very easily get out of hand.

Drapier's friend was now warming up.

"Look at the last few weeks. First it was mental handicap. Poor Mildred Fox came under fierce pressure on that one. Ferocious pressure. She is a decent girl and what happened wasn't fair, but once you hold the fate of the government in your hands that's the way it's going to be. You're fair game for every group with a cause.

"Then we had the structural funds and Jackie Healy-Rae redrawing the map of the country. And last week we had Harry Blaney playing hell about these bloody erections in Donegal."

"Beg pardon?" said Drapier, thinking he had missed something.

"The masts," snapped his friend impatiently. "These Esat things, and God knows what it will be next week. But you can be damned sure there will be something."

As his friend wended his way back to the office to sign another couple of hundred Christmas cards, Drapier reflected on what he had been saying.

Yes, there is a new jitteriness in here. And it's not just the usual end-of-term fatigue at work. Quite simply, the Independents are in danger of being hoist on their own petard, victims of their own success.

Because they hold the balance of power they are targeted by every pressure group with a point to make, and some of the pressure is neither subtle nor pleasant.

Some of their own supporters are even worse, luxuriating in the sense of their own importance and forgetting that politics is about balance, about not exciting envy or annoying more people than you have to.

Jackie Healy-Rae in particular forgets that every loudly acclaimed victory puts further pressure on his own Independent colleagues, leaving their supporters asking why, if Jackie can get it, their people can't, and forgetting that governments sometimes have to say No and may have to do so in a way that leaves little room for manoeuvre. Not even Seamus Brennan can square every political circle.

Mildred Fox is particularly vulnerable. Drapier thinks highly of her. She is a good Wicklow politician who works hard and has her late father's decency and straightness. But she is young and she has none of the protection the collective security a political party offers.

And because she is so vulnerable, she is the one the interest groups pick on in particular.

She misses Neil Blaney, who was a wise mentor and often marked her card in her early days. If Jackie Healy-Rae would only calm down for a minute or two he might see that his antics are doing Mildred no favours at all.

Meanwhile the Budget debate droned on. So small is the impact in here it's almost as if it never happened.

Drapier is mystified. Here we have the most plentiful Budget in history, and yet, for all one hears this week it seems to have risen without trace, vanishing into the ether.

It is one of those strange things about politics which continues to fascinate. Great Budget, but what do the media concentrate on? You've got it, the cock-up in Dermot Ahern's Department and then the goings-on in Kerrykeel with Harry Blaney digging his heels in unless he got his way.

No wonder Bertie Ahern was so tetchy all week, snapping his irritation, not just in the Dail but also in his parliamentary party. All that and the continuing problems in the North have made for a gloomy Bertie of late, the lukewarm reaction to the Budget being the hardest bit to take.

In a way, it's the old story. Those who benefited feel they got no more than they were entitled to and that they had waited overlong for the benefits anyway. So it's thanks, but no thanks. Those who did not benefit are the ones who make the noise, and that is why we will hear a lot of noise over the coming weeks especially from the carers, the child-care industry and the motor people.

In other words the Finance Bill, when it comes, will have a number of potential flashpoints, and Drapier's economist friends tell him that the working out of the new tax credits could leave a lot of lower-paid married women significantly worse off, even if it means higher aggregate earnings for the couple.

We'll see, but if what Drapier's friend tells him turns out to be the case it could make a lot of women very angry indeed. Robbing Paula to pay Peter may leave them better off as a couple, but it may turn out to be bad politics. As Albert might say - but no, on second thoughts, Drapier is in enough trouble already.

Drapier's main point, however, is that one week later there is very little talk about this much-heralded Budget. Drapier feels this is unfair because, in his view, it is one of the best Budgets of recent years. But one of the surest laws of political life is that eaten bread is soon forgotten, and the public mood is fickle.

As Albert Reynolds once famously said: you jump the big hurdles, it's the small ones that bring you down. And so it will be this time.