DRAPIER: Back this week and a bit more structure and shape to it all. But not much. There is still a strong sense of minds being elsewhere and with virtually a poll a day there was plenty to feed the frenzy of speculation and nervousness that pervades this place at present.
Drapier still believes that we would all be better off - well most of us - to go sooner rather than later. The current campaign is well and truly on, promising to be as long and as intense as an American presidential contest and with little prospect of much good government while it all goes on.
Drapier was right in one of his predictions last week. Expect plenty of stunts; even as Drapier was writing Noel O'Flynn was off on his distasteful little campaign against asylum-seekers. Everyone who knows Noel O'Flynn knows what he is at and it does him little credit. Something stronger than Bertie Ahern's bland reprimand on Thursday was called for - and it is still not too late for something more forthright.
There are many problems arising from the immigration issue. We were not prepared, either administratively or psychologically, to deal with the range of problems - processing, accommodation and assimilation. But real progress has been made. There are many very good people in both the voluntary and public service working very hard to find real answers. But the last thing anyone needs at this stage is a cynical stirring of the racial pot, which is why Noel O'Flynn was so wrong this week. Not, Drapier suspects, that that will bother him all that much.
One aspect of the election campaign that has already been decided is that the country's most powerful media group, Independent Newspapers, has come down firmly in favour of the status quo - it's payback time Mark 2.
If there was any doubt about this - and there wasn't really - last week's Sunday Independent removed any lingering doubt. Not one, but five separate articles assailed Michael Noonan. The message was not a subtle one. It was hammer blow stuff all the way. The O'Reilly group has clearly made its commercial decision and this is now being given its editorial reality. Nor need Ruairí Quinn hope for much better.
This is a fact that the opposition parties are going to have to live with. And in truth there is little point in complaining because the man who buys ink by the barrel will always have the last word. But Drapier has no doubt that it is going to be an issue, and possibly a big one in the coming months. Certainly it deserves to be.
You have only to look across the Irish Sea to see the vilification by the Murdoch media of Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock - and then when it suited their purposes, of John Major and William Hague. At least with the old Irish Press the agenda was open. Now the agenda is blurred and mainly hidden - and is all the more dangerous for that.
Talking of the media, Drapier always pulls back a little when he sees a media consensus developing. Such a consensus is now clearly emerging: Bertie Ahern will be Taoiseach no matter what happens, possibly even with the PDs and a few Independents, but if not then with Labour; Fine Gael and Labour will not be able to put together a government and Sinn Féin will do very well. In other words it's really only a question of going through the motions.
Drapier remembers earlier and other instances of an emerging media consensus well before the election - and consensuses which failed to hold water as events, some of which might have been expected, others which clearly could not have been, emerged to change things dramatically. In 1977 the media consensus told us that Liam Cosgrave's government could not be beaten - in 1989 the media made Charles Haughey a certainty for an overall majority; there was no media prediction of the Spring surge of 1992.
Drapier's point is a simple one - the growing media certainty as to how things will emerge is not shared by many of his colleagues in Leinster House. As things stand most of us see significant variation between constituencies with the quality and the work of the candidates being the key factor. Most outgoing TDs and aspiring Senators have had five clear years to build up a strong relationship with their constituents, and most have used that time well. In Drapier's view the incumbency factor will be a big one and will work in favour of any outgoing TDs and Senators.
There will be exceptions. The electorate may well judge some to have passed their sell-by date; others may have passed the boredom threshold. But for the most part Drapier believes it will be at least as strong a determinant as party allegiance in many constituencies.
What cannot be predicted just yet is whether there will be a major swing in any particular direction. Drapier sees no sign of any such as yet. But it could happen and the events of the next few weeks will be crucial in determining whether it will or not. If there is a major shift in public mood - whether for or against the Government - then the parties will either be swept along on the tide or left stranded and there will be little they can do by that stage.
As yet there are few enough indications, but that does not mean it will not happen. For the moment Drapier, like most of his colleagues, sees the election as a war of attrition, fought on a variety of battlefields, with enough last seats teetering on the brink to maintain the uncertainty, the drama and the nerves right up to polling day - and even after.
And that is about the only consensus to be found among Drapier's colleagues.
The PDs have done Bertie Ahern a great favour by taking the Bertie Bowl off the election agenda. Drapier has no doubt Bertie still wants the bowl and not a scaled down version of it either, and if re-elected will reinstate it as a priority. But for the moment it is a distraction and one best parked.
The reality is that the Bertie Bowl is too obvious and inviting a target to be left around during an election campaign. Opposition parties love to have what they can call a "vanity" project in their sights. A government which won't spend money on this hospital or that child care programme, which won't provide basic sporting amenities. . . the list is endless . . . and is prepared to indulge a Taoiseach's whim with an investment of one billion pounds in a white elephant.
But the PDs have now ensured the issue will be spiked for the duration, unless of course Bertie turns stubborn and digs his heels in. But Drapier doubts if Bertie is prepared to make the bowl an election issue and he suspects there may have been a fair bit of tic-tacking between the two leaders before "PD sources" let Charlie Bird in on the secret.