THE House was quiet on Thursday when news came through from Drumcree. There were only a few of us around but the reaction was despair and disbelief.
The TV pictures tumbled in the desperate anger of Cardinal Daly, the cold fury of John Bruton, the gloating tones of Bob McCartney, the insufferable smugness of David Trimble, the weary anger of Seamus Mallon in the House of Commons and, of course, the throbbing sounds of the drums, those triumphalist drums that indicated that the traditional rock face of unionism still ruled OK and that the ozone layer of Orangism would continue to prevent any real change.
It was despair as Drapier has not seen before. There was a sense of people who have learned nothing and who have no intention of changing.
It was the best week for ages for the IRA and Sinn Fein. All the difficult questions about Jerry McCabe's murder, about Clonaslee and about Manchester were gone in one instant.
For David Trimble it will be a costly victory. Any sense that he is a statesman, that his instincts are generous or visionary, as some of his southern media admirers keep telling us, were well and truly swept away.
It is at times like this that the absence on the unionist side of a John Hume or Seamus Mall on is so strikingly obvious. Indeed, David Trimble's performance begins to make Jim Molyneaux look like a statesman.
Drapier does, however, have one word of weary caution. In spite of it all we must still be patient. Too much has been invested to allow anger to sweep it away.
It is not easy but it is the only way and it was never more important that bipartisan policy stay intact. Drapier has no doubt it will but sadly the real action is elsewhere, in a land where reason, generosity and tolerance are in short supply.
Drapier's readers know by now that on matters local he is usually right and so it was last week when he said that the tide was turning for Nora Owen.
Drapier put it down to a sense of fair play. To a great extent, he was vindicated in the Sunday Independent poll last weekend which showed that while the Government and politicians in general came in for a great deal of stick the public was not going to scapegoat Nora.
IN Drapier's view, Nora Owen has been a good Minister for Justice and it is only in recent times that people have been able to see that she wasn't always getting the support she was entitled to.
Now at least, she has a free hand and in Pat Byrne she has a Commissioner well suited to energise a police force that needs energising and direction as never before.
Mr Byrne was a good choice. The overwhelming view in here is that he was the best man for the job. One of his first jobs now will be to see if he can knock sense into the heads of the feuding Garda organisations.
Drapier more than once has said that this dispute is a national scandal and that it is an unconscionable waste of public time and money that legislation is needed to sort it out.
Drapier wants to reflect a moment on last weekend's poll. There was a curious message in it. The "scorch and destroy" policies which seemed to dominate in the contributions of John O'Donoghue and Liz O'Donnell and which saturated the airwaves in the aftermath of the killings did little for their respective parties.
Fianna Fail are steady as she goes but with no evident boost from their hard line, and at five per cent the PDs have little enough to shout about. It may be that the public is far more mature on this issue than many politicians give them credit for.
What the poll tells Drapier is that the next election is wide open. Fianna Fail's core vote is steady but still not enough, and the party has a bad habit of going back rather than forward once an election is called.
The PDs have failed to get added value from Mary Harney's popularity, and no one in here takes seriously their talk about winning new seats next time out.
The Labour figures continue to head south but very few at this stage see that being translated into massive losses. Labour will hold virtually all its non Dublin seats and in Drapier's view that includes Willie Penrose in Westmeath but Dublin may well be a different matter.
THE Fine Gael vote is on a slow but steady increase and is likely to keep going that way. Unlike the last election, when Fine Gael was virtually relegated to the role of spectators, its position will be central next time out.
The crucial fact is that the next year and the campaign will be crucial. It is the most open situation Drapier can remember and it will stay that way.
Otherwise, it was quiet in here, and for that we are all grateful. The Seanad was sitting and, among other things, passed Nora Owen's Court Officers Bill creating three new Circuit Court judges.
Tom Enright used the occasion to repeat his criticism of some of his local district justices, who have been sounding off in blunderbuss fashion of late.
Judicial appointments were the big talking point during the week. Drapier noted Michael O'Kennedy's view that the list as published on Tuesday would have been very little different had the famous assessment board not existed.
Certainly, political pedigrees were not entirely absent from the new list something which Drapier welcomes. He has always taken the view that involvement in politics is to be encouraged and should not be a bar to preferment.
Kevin Haugh is the son of a former Fianna Fail attorney general of the 1940s who went on to be a fine judge. Frank O'Donnell's father was the redoubtable Pa O'Donnell, a minister in John A. Costello's second government and true son of the Rosses, while Alison Lindsay is a daughter of the late Pat Lindsay, a man much loved in here and still sadly missed.
There was great satisfaction too with the elevation of Catherine McGuinness to the High Court. Catherine was an excellent senator but she has really come into her own on the bench.