Drapier: Joe Walsh and Michael Smith have been around for a long time. They are, as we know, Ministers for Agriculture and Defence respectively. What the public doesn't know is that they are also ersatz taoisigh filling in for the real thing whenever Bertie has to lunch in the Baltics or open a pub in Cavan.
These moments of greatness usually happen on Thursday morning as the Dáil is winding down for the week, and guys are anxiously watching the clock to see if they can make the early train home. The result is low-key tedium. Kenny and Rabbitte put the questions. Joe Higgins demands the nationalisation of the banks.
The Minister reads out a script. We all shout a bit, go to the bar, have a scone and go home. This week was different.
Real anger is a rarity in Leinster House. Bertie gets the odd flash of black temper. Ruairí Quinn earned the epithet of "Mr Angry from Sandymount" but rarely hit the right note. Enda Kenny seems to be congenitally incapable of anger. Pat Rabbitte on the other hand?
Maybe he had too much Weetabix for breakfast. Maybe it was something to do with all those long weeks on the road listening to the punters. It's even possible that the Labour leader really does care about rural Garda stations.
One thing is certain. Rabbitte's outburst on Wednesday was the real thing. The anger was palpable, visceral, even a little bit frightening.
His immediate target, Rory O'Hanlon, the Ceann Comhairle, was clearly more than a little shaken, but to be fair to him he acted wisely and quickly in defusing the situation when most of his Fianna Fáil colleagues were trying to milk it.
Rabbitte, too, stepped back from the brink. But the real issues remain. It is difficult to blame Ministers for getting a little complacent. They've been in power for an eternity, and it's hardly surprising if they regard questions from the opposition as passing irritants to be parried. The trouble is that our rules, and the rigid application of the rules, actively encourage this complacency.
Ministers have two minutes to answer a question. Questioners can respond only once. Often this is plenty. Sometimes it isn't. Often a Minister will innocently fall foul of the rules. But sometimes, not very often but often enough, a Minister will deliberately waffle his way through the allotted time so as to avoid answering a question.
It's difficult to blame the opposition for getting frustrated when this happens. What's really surprising is that rows such as we had on Wednesday don't happen more often.
The spark was decentralisation, THE issue of the local elections. From the moment Charlie McCreevy finished his Budget speech last year it was clear that the name of the game was votes.
The promise of Civil Service jobs was to be doled out by Government candidates in exchange for support in next week's elections.
To begin with, the strategy worked a treat. True, a few Opposition people made worthy speeches in Leinster House, but most Opposition deputies on the ground were cowed into complicit silence. Dubs of all parties bit their lips lest they be accused of snatching crumbs from the disadvantaged rural brethren.
But make no mistake: the stroke is rapidly coming unstuck, and badly so at that.
Nobody, Drapier included, had anticipated the strength of the backlash from civil servants living in Dublin. Civil servants, many of them naturally reluctant to criticise Government policy, are queueing up to give Fianna Fáil and PD candidates an almighty earful.
Both Government parties have now copped what is happening, and we can expect many more statements from FF and PD candidates like the one from Chris Andrews early this week expressing solidarity with those individuals and families singled out by Charlie McCreevy for transportation.
Tom Parlon accepts that the programme won't meet its target completion date. The first sign of Government softening on the issue. It won't be the last.
Drapier hates opinion polls. The constituency polls carried out by TG4 and some of the newspapers before the last election were a curse on all our lives. They were treated by lots of commentators as if they were the final word on the election itself and in some cases (Carlow-Kilkenny comes to mind) they had an unfair role in deciding the actual result of the real election.
But much though we hate and distrust them, all politicians read polls, if only to seek sustenance for our own private theories. Polls don't create support for candidates, but they can create a momentum for particular candidates, which can accelerate what is already happening on the ground.
As Drapier sees it, there are only four candidates in the European elections who've got the mo. They are Marian Harkin, Kathy Sinnott, Mairead McGuinness and Ivana Bacik. All four are women, but there the similarity ends. Their political views range from the liberal left views of Bacik in Dublin to the Danaesque views of Sinnott in Munster.
A month ago, none of the four would have been expected to win. Drapier, for one, would risk a few bob on all four if a bookie could be found to take the chance!
This was a historic week in Leinster House in a way that none of us would have wished. For the first time ever the Oireachtas has started a process which could end in the impeachment of a judge.
The presentation of the resolution by Michael McDowell on Wednesday was marked by grim determination on all sides. There has been a lot of consultation between parties as to how we should do this, and a remarkable level of consensus has been reached on the way ahead.
A few weeks ago Vincent Browne wrote in these pages that the process was a bit of a joke in that a deal would inevitably be struck to buy out the judge. Vincent may be right, but having watched things closely for the last few weeks Drapier is not so sure.