As our betters fly out to celebrate the national holiday in the four corners - well almost - of the Earth, little enough is happening in here. Although the committees have been in session, so long as the Chamber itself is not functioning, the media believe Leinster House is shut down.
And it suits nobody better than Bertie Ahern that usual business has been disrupted. As he and his Ministers flee the State to far-off outposts, they leave behind a troubled island.
The stock markets are tumbling, the US downturn has reached Leixlip, the teachers are in open revolt, progress in Northern Ireland is uncertain and meanwhile UK foot-and-mouth disease is causing serious grief to businesses unconnected to agriculture in the Republic. Farmers can expect to be compensated for anticipated losses but other businesses that have dried up have no such protection.
His supporters believe Bertie Ahern is a lucky general. Most recently they point not just to Fine Gael and the cheque that can't find a home, but also to the Ned O'Keeffe affair.
Having procrastinated for two months, if Bertie had delayed the departing Minister of State for a further two weeks he would have been caught with O'Keeffe as a central minister handling the foot-and-mouth controversy. It would have been an appalling political vista and one our Taoiseach escaped only by the skin of his teeth.
Can it stay fine for him? That he should select the teachers and corporate donations as the two issues on which uniquely to take a hardline position is not consistent with his usual conciliatory personality. It is extraordinary, as Roisin Shortall pointed out, for the Minister for Education, Michael Woods to depart for Malaysia while, in particular, the Leaving Certificate exams are threatened.
No less remarkable is the failure of the Labour Court to recognise that the teachers needed an upfront payment if they were to be encouraged to ballot their members to call off their industrial action. In any event, how did the dispute end up in the Labour Court as distinct from the Labour Relations Commission? Most observers in here believe Woods is whistling past the graveyard when he assures parents the exams will proceed.
Parents know that whatever about holding the exams, papers cannot be marked without the approval and participation of serving teachers. If Michael Woods thinks flying to the Far East will signal a hard line to the teachers, inducing a collapse of their campaign, he is mistaken. Hell hath no fury like a parent whose offspring has been slighted or whose educational prospects have been damaged.
Michael Woods may be at the end of his ministerial career, but his Taoiseach and his Government may yet pay a price for their misreading of the teachers' issue.
In the past Bertie was so expert at the timing of his interventions that industrial relations practitioners used to complain privately about doing all the work while Bertie took all the credit. In his new incarnation Bertie would have us believe he has abandoned intervening in favour of issuing confrontational epistles.
Certainly the letter to the ASTI seems calculated only to exacerbate the mood in the classroom. Charlie Lennon must bemoan the fact that he doesn't have the same clout in Government circles as Paul McGuinness. Whenever the second U2 concert happens Drapier won't be surprised if Bertie appears on stage with Bono.
The letter on corporate donations to the Labour Leader, Ruairi Quinn, as published in this newspaper, is even more confrontational and petulant in tone. Whatever about the Government, it would appear that the message Fianna Fail has taken from the Fine Gael/ Telenor affair is that Fianna Fail can now afford to dismiss public concerns about business funding of politics.
It would appear that Bertie Ahern's strategy on this contentious issue is to cap financial contributions but press ahead with the increased limits for electoral spending as provided for in the Dempsey Bill. Noel Dempsey had already publicly indicated that in certain circumstances he was prepared to withdraw the provisions that would permit higher spending.
Since then the controversy surrounding Fine Gael seems only to have steeled the resolve of the Taoiseach to retain business funding and allow increased electoral spending. Many colleagues on both sides of the House privately took the view that the Fine Gael debacle would be the last nail in the coffin of corporate donations.
The Taoiseach seems to have drawn the opposite conclusion. In other words that the Fine Gael Party has been sufficiently implicated in the latest controversy that the system can continue more or less as before and that as the proponents of increased electoral spending Fianna Fail will not disproportionately attract public odium.
Fine Gael is entrapped in the sense that it seems unlikely that the darker mutterings about the bona fides of the original ESAT decision are capable of being cleared up in advance of the general election. After two meetings the Public Enterprise Committee has been unable to decide whether it ought to embark on a parliamentary inquiry.
At its meeting this week the committee elicited that the Moriarty tribunal is holding a preliminary investigation to establish prima facie if a case exists for a full inquiry. In this environment Fine Gael protestations that the manner of awarding the licence has already been scrutinised will be lost. The party is on stronger ground when it points out that the present Minister, Mary O'Rourke, has had almost four years to unearth any wrongdoing and has failed to do so.
Whatever is ultimately decided, it is doubtful if the public will suddenly smile benignly on corporate donations merely because Fianna Fail takes comfort from the involvement of Fine Gael in a funding controversy. The Labour Party shows no sign of withdrawing its Bill for abolition and Fine Gael is committed under its new leader to holding the line for abolition.