The most extraordinary statements of the week came, not surprisingly, from Fianna Fail Ministers trying to explain their party's defeat in the Dublin North and Limerick East by-elections.
Dermot Ahern said at the Dublin count that he "detected no surge towards Labour and no surge away from Fianna Fail". (FF's vote had just fallen by 7 per cent and Labour's had risen by almost 20 per cent, since the general election.)
In Limerick, FF's loss was matched by a Labour gain of almost 16 per cent. But Mary Wallace, on Later on 2, somehow managed to claim that the electorate hadn't been "critical of the Government".
It was all of a piece with Bertie Ahern's inept response when he was given the results in London: "What's new?" And both Taoiseach and Ministers were in tune with the gaggle of commentators who plunged right in at the shallow end to explore and explain.
Of course, it's as plain as a pikestaff that sympathy for the great Jim Kemmy helped Jan O'Sullivan, and that many in Dublin North had come to regret Sean Ryan's defeat in the general election.
It's also plain that FF made tactical errors in the course of the campaign. Why that happened is largely the party's concern, although there may be a connection between its over-confidence and the curious claims made by Dermot Ahern and Ms Wallace.
And, yes, it has come to be considered an all but invariable rule of politics that governments lose by-elections. (Why not make that "elections"? Not since 1969 has a government been re-elected unchanged.)
But there are issues other than those about which journalists and politicians chatted for the past couple of days. Issues more important than party squabbles or, for that matter, who sits in Merrion Street - if sitting in Merrion Street is all that matters to them.
Little was heard of the reason for the Dublin contest. It was noted in passing that the seat had been held by Ray Burke and his late father in 17 elections over 54 years. No one seems to have inquired whether the controversy which led to Ray Burke's resignation had an effect, though the constituency has long been considered an area of intensive land rezoning.
There seems to have been no debate about the standards in political and financial affairs currently under investigation on several fronts. Explanations for Fianna Fail's low vote concentrated on relatively harmless local problems. But the level of support in the general election was the second-lowest in the party's history.
So the latest drop is not, as Frank Dunlop likes to claim, a blip: something to be remedied, if not by the FF-PD Coalition in the present Dail, then by an FF-Labour coalition in the next. It's a more significant comment on the Government's policies and performance than its members care to admit.
And the cheerful assumption that if the current partnership doesn't succeed, another will follow, like a number 15 bus, is a poor reflection on FF's ambitions. Not to mention its assessment of Labour and Ruairi Quinn.
If the height of the party's ambition is to hang on to office at all costs and with any partner, some of its decisions and indecision may be more easily understood.
Jan O'Sullivan said of Labour's successes: "We ran our campaign with the message that Irish society should spread the fruits of success more widely, and the electorates of Limerick East and Dublin North have agreed with us."
But, apart from the discussion on Later on 2, and in particular the contributions of Richard Bruton, Fergus Finlay and Derek McDowell, little has been heard of the Budget - popularly viewed as a boon to the rich.
In the Dublin and Limerick campaigns very little was said in its defence by FF and the PDs apart from some bland - and blatantly false - assertions about the impact of its tax cuts.
Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left have made it clear that they intend to support the Government in its current policies on Northern Ireland and the European Union. This is as it ought to be: bipartisanship has a relatively short but honourable tradition here. The Government must feel free to choose the course of action best suited to the national interest.
It may depend on Independent deputies for survival. But a government's survival isn't all that matters: the Taoiseach and his colleagues must not allow themselves to be said or led by Independents or, if it comes to that, by Sinn Fein.
The Opposition, as John Bruton, Ruairi Quinn and Proinsias De Rossa have emphasised, is conscious of the pressure under which the Government must work to complete the multi-party negotiations and preparations for referendums on Northern Ireland and the Amsterdam Treaty.
But, as Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left speakers have also repeated since Thursday, the promise of co-operation does not extend to social issues and questions of taxation. And it won't cover a repetition of the fumbling and indecision to which the Government seems prone.
No one expects an early general election; and it's clear the Independents would want one least of all. But events capable of tripping up governments often arise without warning and are as quickly forgotten.
Who now remembers Fieldcrest, the Kilkenny towel factory over which Charles Haughey's 1982 government suffered its first, though not yet decisive defeat? Or the private member's motion on funds for haemophiliacs, which became Mr Haughey's excuse for going to the country in 1989?
FF organisers obviously misinterpreted the national opinion polls and imagined that high satisfaction ratings for the Government and Mr Ahern would see them through. The tripartite coalition made a similar mistake before the general election.
The FF-PD coalition is now, as the centre-left coalition was in the first half of 1997, vulnerable to pressure, not only from within the Dail but from powerful forces outside.
Des O'Malley, on RTE's News at One yesterday, echoed a warning given lately by Prof Peter Mair about the dangers of "a flow from participation in the electoral system" (O'Malley's words).
Mr O'Malley, who compared polls of 50 and 54 per cent this week with 83 per in by-elections of the 1960s, warned that the vacuum created by the flow from participation would be filled by the extremes of left and right.
Prof Mair, a political scientist of international standing, suggested that an increasing sense of distrust in parties and political leaders could also lead to an increasing sense of distrust in democratic processes generally.
"What is perhaps even more important in the short run, however," he said, in a lecture at UCD, "is that, in a number of European countries, anti-party sentiment has already begun to be exploited by the so-called anti-party parties of the extreme right, which now seek to mobilise populist antiestablishment feelings."