With neither House sitting and committees light on the ground, there was a touch of the silly season about last week. In spite of that, important issues did surface, even if none of them came anywhere near resolution.
The Arms Trial in particular continued to generate heat if not light. For most people under 50 it is a matter of academic or speculative interest, if indeed it interests them at all.
For many over 50 or for those with particular agendas, it continues to be a matter of burning interest, with serious contemporary implications. For those who may have been wronged, there is the simple matter of justice to be done.
Dessie O'Malley is right when he says the issues are complex, and it may well be that we will never get a universally acceptable version of what happened and why. But that does not mean we should not try. The only body with the authority and the capacity to do this is the State itself.
It is important that we try first of all because of the intrinsic importance of the Arms Trial itself. It is in the public interest that we know all that can be known about the events of these recent and in some ways so very distant days.
We know, too, from recent experience the dangers inherent in any attempt to cover up or brush matters under some convenient carpet. It is better to get everything out in the open, and if the truth hurts, then so be it. It is not as if by denial the issues will go away. They are there anyway; the only question is how we deal with them.
The alternative to dealing with this matter decisively now is that we will have history by drip-feed. Each new document will be the latest sensation.
Conclusions will be drawn from individual events rather than from the full picture. Spin-doctors will enter the frame: point-scoring and personal vendettas will find their way in.
Indeed, already the sides are lining up where people are star ting to look at events of 30 years ago with perfect hindsight or to score a predictable political hit. The Government should move decisively to set up a mechanism through which the evidence can be collected, examined and made public.
The long-locked-away Public Accounts archive should be opened up. Why the Dail should be exempt from the same requirements as government departments on the question of publishing its records is a mystery.
Those who have evidence - politicians, journalists, former Army officers or whoever - should be invited to give that evidence. When all the facts are in, then conclusions should be drawn. Such an exercise need not take long, nor need it be cumbersome or expensive.
The last thing we need is a tribunal, nor is an Oireachtas committee the right vehicle to examine these issues; the issues are still too close for politicians. The best means would be a small independent committee, chaired perhaps by a former judge, with one or two historians and other experts as its members.
Much of the work is already done, but such a committee would bring together all available evidence, draw its own conclusions and let us do likewise.
Des O'Malley and the PDs should be the first to welcome the establishment of such a committee. They are the people with most to lose should the present unstructured debate continue. By taking the initiative they would clearly indicate they had nothing to fear from the truth, however uncomfortable it may be in places.
Meanwhile, at a noisier level, the teachers' conferences dominated the headlines.
Drapier has long believed that the conferences, which have become a fixed Easter ritual, do little to enhance the image of teachers.
It is in the nature of media coverage that those who capture the headlines are the loudest, the angriest or the most extreme, that the middle-of-the-road majority are not headline material, and the overall picture to the public is dominated by the whingers and the attention-seekers.
It may be unfair, but that is how it comes across, and this year in Galway at least it was even worse than usual. Michael Woods may not have many fans in Leinster House, but he behaved this week with dignity and decency. And the contrast with his hosts was striking.
He was an invited guest, yet he turned up to be greeted by surly hosts, loutish behaviour and childish petulance. It wasn't just Michael Woods who got such treatment.
The parents' representatives, also invited guests, and the media who were simply doing their job, got much of the same treatment. All this from the very same teachers who warn their students that their behaviour in public reflects on the reputation of the school. Clearly a lesson left behind.
Drapier knows there is anger and hurt, but there is also reality. The industrial action has been an unmitigated disaster and has inflicted the greatest hurt on the teaching profession itself. However, Drapier sees little point in going on. The boil of discontent was not lanced in Galway.
The poison in the system will fester away for some time yet, and nobody apparently can or will do anything.
The most significant publication of the week was the report of the Irish Penal Trust on the treatment of mental patients. It makes for shameful reading and, along with the failure to provide secure accommodation for disturbed teenagers and the series of reports by the Inspector of Mental Hospitals, points to the underside of the Celtic Tiger and puts the projected £1 billion spend on the Bertie Bowl into some sort of perspective.
It is not as if the Government has not been told of the situation often enough.
Mary Henry in particular has sought debate after debate in the Seanad and has been waging her own campaign for years, and getting neither thanks nor attention from the Government for her efforts. Maybe this latest report will make a difference.
Finally this week, back to Beverley Cooper-Flynn. Drapier could hardly believe his eyes when he read that National Irish Bank was, in effect, asking Beverley to foot its bill for the discovery of documents in the trial.
Is this the same NIB whose products Beverley was selling on terms laid down by it? The same Beverley who so faithfully reflected the corporate culture of the NIB? Is this the same NIB whose performance at the Public Accounts Committee on DIRT was abject, even by the standards of some of the other banks?
All Drapier can say is that the arrogance of the banks never ceases to amaze.
Meanwhile, reality is beginning to sink in with Beverley. She still has the Supreme Court appeal, but it is a long shot. All the while the costs are rising while her political options are closing down. The website poll in Castlebar was only a straw in the wind, but in a wind that has become increasingly hostile and chilly.