Obviously the good news from the North, tentative though it might have been, was the only news which really counted this week. We have all been around too long to take anything for granted, but at last it does look as if George Mitchell has begun to square this particular circle. It is hopeful, and there is no shortage of goodwill for David Trimble as he faces his biggest task yet.
One disquieting aspect - at least for long-time believers in constitutional politics - is the apparent sidelining of the SDLP. It is precisely because of the IRA links to Sinn Fein that Gerry Adams has been centre stage with David Trimble all this time and it is because the SDLP does not have any paramilitary links that its members have found themselves excluded from this last part of the debate.
It is essential that the SDLP get back centre stage. It has paid too high a price, fought too long and too valiant a battle to see itself marginalised at this stage, but history has a nasty habit of doing that.
Nobody rewrites the history of the last 30 years better than Sinn Fein, but let us never forget that without the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the IRA would not have been weaned into constitutional politics - and just how constitutional we have yet to see. With out John Hume, the vision of a pluralist Northern Ireland would not have been articulated and taken root; without Seamus Mallon, the spirit of decency and democracy might have been quenched.
The SDLP represents all that is best and most decent in nationalist politics. A strong SDLP is the surest guarantee the new institutions will work.
In political terms however, the SDLP is not nearly so cute or so streetwise as its counterparts in Sinn Fein, but it still has a strong reserve of talent and energy, of good new people ready to push their case. It has, too, a record of breaking down sectarian barriers, of respecting democratic and constitutional principles at all times and of showing courage and resilience through the darkest and most difficult years. Drapier hopes we will see it back centre stage over the coming days. It has given too much to be anywhere else.
The National Development Plan was launched with a fanfare of trumpets on Monday and excited the usual reaction among the various professional groups. But otherwise it seemed to leave most people cold. Drapier heard no real talk of it outside the House and little enough inside.
Drapier saw three main reasons for this. First, there is the sheer enormity of the sums involved. They are not just telephone numbers, but cross-channel numbers, too huge to grasp.
One colleague put it well: "You can promise people highways, bypasses, social housing, the lot. You can talk to them in millions and billions and it won't impress them. Tell them they won't get their group water scheme, or that their local road will not be upgraded or that their school will not get a much-needed remedial teacher and all hell breaks loose. People understand the local and they often prefer specific grievances to big-time promises."
In other words, no matter what happens in Merrion Street or in the Custom House, all politics will still largely be local.
The second reason for the muted reaction to the plan is the language it is couched in. It is the language of the professional planners, the sociologists and the economists, rich in abstraction, poor in imagery and day-to-day detail. Even David Hanley, normally the most linguistically fastidious of men, Orwellian in his passion for clear, precise language, couldn't stop talking about "spatial development" on Tuesday's Morning Ireland. Drapier remembers a time when David would have withered somebody using that jargon, but now even he seems to have succumbed.
The third reason the plan was so quietly received was the most worrying, and maybe the most realistic - doubts about the capacity of this, or any, administration to deliver. The truth of the matter is that much of the execution of this plan will fall to the local authorities, almost certainly the weakest link in our system of public administrations.
Many of them are already swamped with work, way behind schedule, finding it hard to get proper staff and still rigidly structured. These factors all loomed large in discussion this week as to how the plans would be put into effect. There was more doubt than certainty and nobody was surprised to see Noel Dempsey's social housing concept run aground. But that said, the plan is good news. It provides a framework and a sense of direction. It is an emphatic vote of confidence in the future.
The only other talking point this week was Liz O'Donnell. The question being asked was whet her the PDs were being devilishly clever, playing both sides against the middle, as they did in the days when Michael McDowell was party chairman, outside the Dail, but providing a parallel voice to the PDs in coalition with Fianna Fail, or whether Liz is on a bit of a solo run.
Drapier inclines to the second view. Mary Harney is very comfortable where she is. She has a good relationship with Bertie Ahern, and is probably closer to him than most of his Fianna Fail colleagues. She has no interest in destabilising her Government.
Whether somebody else is pulling the strings for Liz is another question, but on balance Drapier thinks not.
The truth is Liz O'Donnell is her own person. She can take politics or leave it and she is not afraid to speak her mind. In the past she could and did make harsh, sometimes personal attacks on her opponents, some of whom have not forgiven and are still lurking in the long grass.
ON the immigration issue she is seriously getting on Fianna Fail nerves and while Ivor Callelly may make some of his colleagues uncomfortable, his attack on Liz struck a chord - though in Drapier's view that won't bother her. By contrast with John O'Donoghue's prickliness, defensiveness and point-scoring, she comes across as open, tolerant and pluralist, the sort of qualities that play well in Dublin South. She will not be chastened by a rebuff from Charlie McCreevy or a cold shoulder from her leader. She is made of sterner stuff and in Drapier's view whether she has a grand design or is simply playing by her shrewd instincts she will continue to be unpredictable.
The only problem is that in Leinster House it is often easier to talk yourself into trouble than out of it, and a time may come when there is no option but to put up or shut up. But few people know that better than Liz.