Why any party in here bothers its head with the Law Library, Drapier can never understand. The Law Library takes itself seriously, but why it should expect the rest of us to take it at its own inflated estimate is beyond Drapier.

Time after time attempts to please this or that section of the library have landed us in trouble; no crowd lobbies more frenetically for even the most modest judicial appointment and, as we all know too, no group is quicker to put distance between itself and ourselves when the immediate ambition is realised - at least until the next time.

These were Drapier's first thoughts when word went around that Charlie McCreevy's appointment of Hugh O'Flaherty was in response to lobbying from senior Fianna Fail barristers. If so, Charlie should have ignored them the same way he ignores nearly everyone else these days.

Even Michael McDowell would have told him that these people live in a privileged world of their own, cut off from the realities of public opinion, having the great luxury to propose but spared the pain of having to face up to the consequence of their advice.

Certainly that was the feeling among the Fianna Fail handlers when first news came through to them yesterday week, and before Joe Lennon rushes to contradict, Drapier knows what he is talking about.

There was an immediate realisation that this was an own goal in the making, one of those gloriously unforced errors which throw all calculations, even the best-laid plans, into disarray. For the PDs it has been nightmare time and has torn the cohesion of that usually tight-knit group into tatters.

Drapier has never seen Helen Keogh so angry, Liz O'Donnell was fit to be tied while Michael McDowell was quick to distance himself from the epicentre of the controversy.

The whole episode proved Charlie McCreevy right in one sense - the softness of the PDs in face of flak and the party's sensitivity to hostile media comment or the latest phone-in programme. Charlie long ago described the PDs as a media-driven party, and it was not meant as a compliment.

Well, at least he got that one right.

The bigger question exercising attention though was the why of it all, and more especially the precise role of Bertie Ahern. Bertie may be Teflon man, but few believed he did not have a central part in the O'Flaherty nomination. This was not a McCreevy solo run and one does not need to be a radio fan of Eamon Dunphy to know that the Sheedy case is back on the agenda - and with a vengeance.

The most common early explanation this week was that it was all part of the process of barter and bargaining and this was Fianna Fail's call. No more, no less.

Another big plum, a directorship of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is coming up shortly and the word was that the PDs have their own distinguished candidate for that post, the price of which was to support the Fianna Fail nominee for the European Investment Bank.

That certainly was the early theory, but was later strenuously denied by Des O'Malley and the PDs. Certainly it's an open secret in here that Dessie was interested, even though it was unlikely his colleagues would have welcomed a difficult by-election. That explanation apparently no longer holds up, no more than the view that soft-hearted politicians, Bertie, Charlie and Mary, were merely doing the decent thing, righting a serious wrong done to a decent man.

Can Cyril Kelly now expect to get the next major vacancy? A Seanad nomination perhaps, or Judge Advocate General? It is often difficult inside Leinster House to measure the full impact of a controversy.

Many colleagues felt this was a me dia and Dublin 4 issue and would leave the wider public untouched and fade into oblivion with the arrival of the next crisis or scandal. The more usual view was that lasting harm has been done and not just to the PDs. For a start, Mary Harney showed bad judgment and got little help from her senior colleagues.

It is not difficult to imagine how she would have performed had she been in Opposition. The indignation and moral outrage would have been delivered by the bucketful. And Des, Liz and Bobby would not have been far behind.

The problem for the PDs is that people expect better of them. Fianna Fail takes inconsistency in its stride and gets away with it, but no such indulgence is given the PDs. Their supporters are the party's harshest and most unforgiving critics.

Most of them jumped ship already from Fianna Fail or Fine Gael and, having jumped once, could just as easily jump again.

Unlike the bigger parties, there is no inheritance of old loyalty to sustain the party through hard times. They are judged solely on current performance. This time the judgment is sharp, with the party's greatest asset, Mary Harney, the main loser.

Fianna Fail survived the O'Flaherty affair with less visible bruising, but it was a sharp reminder to the party that we are in the season of unforced errors where increasingly out of touch ministers will land them in it again and again.

The PDs must have felt a certain sense of ironic relief that the Charlie Haughey story landed in the middle of the O'Flaherty controversy and deflected attention. Not so Fianna Fail, however.

The latest staggering revelations, and with more to come, are another painful reminder of the web of corruption spread by Haughey with the increasingly pressing question of how wide was this web and who else may yet be involved.

Drapier has never experienced a more jittery or unpleasant atmosphere in Leinster House than prevails at present. There is no sense of imminent collapse; the Government will survive until the summer recess, which will be longer than usual this year because of the rebuilding at Leinster House.

Every little helps and so the Government will stumble into the autumn.

A summer is a long time in politics and, with the spin-doctors working overtime, who knows but the Government may come back with all flags flying, all worries behind it. Perhaps - but nobody in here believes that.

The feeling is that things can only get worse with both Flood and Moriarty in full spate and with both Ray Burke and Padraig Flynn - neither of whom owe the current crowd any favours - about to give further evidence. And of course Frank Dunlop, not to mention Tom Gilmartin.

There are some who bet the new revelations will finally break the PD nerve and there are some quiet bets being placed that when we go into recess in July we will not come back - that in order to keep his Government intact, Bertie will go to the country in late September - better go with the PDs than risk a Fianna Fail versus "the rest" scenario.

It would not be Bertie's style to rush his fences, but after this week the options are closing down, slowly but surely.