Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Drapier certainly got it wrong last Saturday in saying that the Government appeared to have settled down and that the earlier tensions had largely disappeared and we could look forward to a long period into the next general election. By Saturday night the pot was on the boil again with the disclosure of the Taoiseach's inquiries to the Department of Justice on behalf of Philip Sheedy.
The temperature was further raised on Sunday when it became known that Mary Harney had more than once requested Mr Ahern to disclose this to the Dail.
Everyone is agreed that the making of the inquiry, which hardly amounted to even a representation in the normal meaning of that word, was relatively harmless in itself. Mr Ahern's awful mistake was to continue over a period of several weeks without disclosing it, given that the whole Sheedy affair had become ultra-sensitive politically and even constitutionally. If it had been disclosed initially, it would probably have blown over in a matter of hours. Now the effects of it, or more precisely the effects of his refusal to disclose it to the Dail, will rumble on for years.
An already bad situation on Monday was compounded by Bertie on that night giving a television interview where he appeared to cast doubt on Mary Harney's version of events and on her requests for disclosure.
Nora Owen was right in saying that what Mr Ahern was saying really amounted to calling Ms Harney a liar. It became very evident on Tuesday morning that she was not going to wear that and when she delivered an ultimatum to him that day he climbed down and issued a statement of apology, which he called "clarification", on Tuesday night.
His own Ministers were mystified by his actions and Drapier has been listening during the week to many of his back-benchers who are quietly furious at what he did. He has resurrected the always latent feeling throughout the State that there is something dodgy about Fianna Fail and its leaders.
This is the last thing that the party wants facing into June's European and local elections. He has ensured that the Sheedy pot will keep boiling and that all the peripheral involvements of various Fianna Fail deputies, senators and councillors with Sheedy will remain a matter for speculation.
Poor Philip Sheedy himself must by now feel that he is the object of what the European Convention on Human Rights calls "cruel and unusual punishment". The poor man and his family are parsed and analysed the length and breadth of the State daily and will continue to be so.
The question the Progressive Democrats must be asking themselves all day every day is: will something like this happen again? Drapier thinks they are not too confident that the answer will be no.
An already difficult situation was further complicated by Hugh O'Flaherty's surprising letter of refusal to the Justice Committee to appear before it. It is surprising because of his expressed previous willingness to appear before it. His grounds for refusing to do so now when he is no longer a judge appear very thin.
Why was the letter leaked before it reached the committee? Hugh seems to be a man prone to changing his mind. A few weeks ago he told Charlie Bird and RTE that there was no way that he would resign and 24 hours later he was gone. His latest refusal, based on constitutional grounds, is hard to fathom because Sheedy's case never came before him as a judge in the Supreme Court. His involvement in it was of a non-judicial nature. Does this give him immunity from being asked to explain why he did what he did?
Drapier is inclined to doubt this. If Mr O'Flaherty is allowed to refuse it seems highly unlikely that Cyril Kelly, who actually heard the case on one occasion, can be compelled to come along to the committee. If there is no resolution of the whys and wherefores of this strange affair it is unlikely to disappear and will cause continuing problems for the Government, as well as the judiciary.
Drapier forecasts that in the weeks to come we will see various court cases dragged up which people were nervous to mention before but where they are now emboldened by recent events to pursue them.
We already had one of these this week when Jim Higgins raised in the House a District Court case in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, where the Minister for Justice appears to have got conflicting explanations of what happened and why. Poor John O'Donoghue certainly is in a hot seat, made all the more uncomfortable by his outspokenness in opposition. John looks like a man who is making heavy weather of his problems. If there was a convenient reshuffle this summer John would be a likely volunteer to move sideways into some more innocuous post where the waters are calmer and the pressures fewer.
As if there were not enough problems for the Government, the Flood Tribunal resurfaced this week with the appearances of Dermot Ahern and Mary Harney dealing with the Ray Burke question and with the inquiries made by Bertie Ahern before he appointed Mr Burke to the Government. The inquiries do not seem to have been as extensive as Dermot suggested. It is clear, however, that Bertie had enough matters drawn to his attention to give him reason to pause before he appointed Mr Burke. Why he went ahead when all these doubts existed has not been explained and presumably he will be asked to appear at the tribunal to explain why himself. Now that Mr Gogarty's evidence has finished, the tribunal seems to be making more progress.
Two tribunals should be enough for anyone at the same time, but are we now looking at the possibility of a third. The Joint Committee on Justice is considering whether it would recommend a tribunal to examine the Sheedy affair if its own powers seem inadequate or the principal people involved are not prepared to co-operate. It is quite a daunting prospect.
In spite of all the political fuss perhaps the most significant item of news in the past week was the report at the weekend that the State appears to have offered more than £1 million pounds to settle a claim brought against it in Europe for a long delay in the judicial process in hearing a case. If this is correct it would be a very significant development indeed and could really open up the constitutional floodgates.