It was meant to be a week dominated by Armagh on Monday and London yesterday - the tying together of two more vital strands, the historic healing of ancient wounds and the building of a bright new future.
And in truth it was a week which deserved to be dominated by these two events. Certainly historians in a future time will see it as such, a week rich in symbolism and for once a symbolism grounded in reality.
Yes, some things did go wrong, or were ill-judged. Drapier will not dwell on the 24 Mercedes and the overkill presence of ministers at the inaugural meeting in Armagh. There was a nouveau vulgarity about it, creating a sense of threat where none should exist, an unnecessary insensitivity visited on David Trimble.
Drapier does not believe it was deliberate. These things rarely are, and he hopes it will not send a subliminal message to greener elements that there was more to the Armagh meeting than meets the eye. The last thing we need at this stage is that people should lose the run of themselves.
Drapier says this very deliberately. He listened to some of the wiser heads speak on Northern Ireland in Tuesday's Seanad debate. Maurice Hayes in particular. If ever there was a need to take things easy, it is now. No triumphalism, no grandiose claims, just a thankful realisation that at last after 3,637 deaths, politics on this island is moving to some sort of normality - the normal relations we have a right to expect from people all of whom profess to be democrats.
Drapier agrees with Bertie Ahern that things have gone too far for there to be any turning back, but neither does he underestimate the forces of evil, the godfathers, the psychopaths, the misguided, who have a powerful vested interest in destroying what has been achieved and know better than most the vulnerabilities of their erstwhile colleagues. It is in the nature of things, certainly if history tells us anything, that Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brun may yet face the type of decisions which confronted Kevin O'Higgins in 1923 and Eamon de Valera in 1939 in dealing with their former comrades.
So, for this and other reasons, Drapier says let us acknowledge the greatness of what has been achieved, but let neither complacency nor arrogance blind us to the difficulties still ahead. It is a time to walk easy.
No walking easy, however, for Jim Mitchell. Nobody has ever accused Jim of being understated and his report did not lack for drama or impact.
Drapier said in these columns many months ago that what Jim and his committee were attempting could change fundamentally the way parliament does its business. As is so often the case Drapier was ahead of the field in making this prediction, and the PAC report has vindicated his judgment. Let Drapier begin by saluting the extraordinary amount of hard work which went into this report. The public hearings which sent the TG4 ratings soaring were the easy part. What followed were late nights, weekend sessions, the abandoning of constituency work and personal life as the report took shape, against a tough self-imposed time limit and with a mountain of complex legal and financial documents to sift through. Not to mention deciding who was not telling the truth.
Now the report is in the public domain and, yes, Drapier will contrast its process with what is happening in Dublin Castle, even if the lawyers raise their eyebrows in exasperation and tell him he is not comparing like with like. Maybe not, but that is how the public sees it and if Jim Mitchell's report does nothing else it should concentrate minds on seeing how tribunals, and the running of them, can be made more efficient and less costly.
Drapier is not going into the details of the report. That is being done elsewhere and if the army of smoothly attired consultants and lobbyists in attendance at Kildare House on Wednesday is anything to go by, we will see many spins and twists put into play over the coming days. Some have started already.
For the most part, however, Drapier would advise those involved to put their hands up, do what has to be done and express what the old Cathechism used call "a firm purpose of amendment" never to sin again. Drapier will not charge for that advice and it may prove cheaper in the long run than what expensive spin doctors are counselling. But he does not expect accountants to listen.
IN any event Jim Mitchell has made his mark. The Mitchell Report will be seen as a milestone in our parliamentary history. But it was not a one-man show. The other members of the committee, Pat Rabbitte, Sean Doherty, Bernard Durkan, Sean Ardagh and Denis Foley, all grew in stature as the process developed. What was most impressive was the strong sense of collegiality, the absence of leaks and partisanship in pursuit of a common objective. Drapier says well done.
Somebody who is not feeling the warmth of collegiality is Charlie McCreevy. Drapier likes Charlie and feels much of the personal criticism of him was way over the top. Charlie McCreevy has more of a social conscience and a better sense of ordinary people than many of those who criticised him so severely. He has always had the courage to follow his convictions, come what may.
But that in its way is at the nub of the current problem.
Now that the smoke has cleared it is obvious that Charlie, along with Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney, made a monumental error of judgment. They got it so wrong as to make John Bruton's tax on children's shoes look insignificant. And unlike John, who was faced with a difficult Budget deficit, they were under no pressure whatsoever.
The whole episode, including the U-turns, the backbench pressure, the leaks, the unravelling of an entire Budget strategy, all tends to concentrate the mind on what may yet emerge as the central issue of the next election - competence.
Bertie Ahern can rightly point to Northern Ireland as evidence of his competence and his achievement. But Northern Ireland is like eaten bread, it is soon forgotten and a catalogue of other issues is emerging to paint a picture of a less than sure-footed administration - the "shambles" over immigration, the U-turn on the Partnership for Peace referendum, the ICC bank debacle all followed by the Budget fiasco are raising questions and giving a lifeline to an opposition which felt itself starved up to now.
Michael Noonan in particular has grasped these chances. He has had a good couple of weeks and has been merciless in his assaults.
We are now at the half-way stage in the life of this Dail. A Government which should be riding high on its success in Northern Ireland and on the unprecedented Budget surpluses is decidedly shaky and unsure. And when things start going wrong at this stage in the life of a government, they rarely get better.