Waiting for Noel Grealish is already something of a pantomime, although there is still an element of mystery in the drama.

There are members of the PDs, with more hope than conviction, whispering 'Oh, no he won't', while more worldly veterans mutter 'Oh, yes he's gone'.

The question is: Will Mr Grealish, TD for Galway West, stick with the PDs or will he join Fianna Fail?

Hardly a dramatic dilemma worthy of Samuel Beckett, but the viability, and even credibility, of the PDs hangs on this 'Waiting for Noel Grealish' production.

The parliamentary party and the national executive of the PDs, a party in the current coalition government, will meet tonight in Leinster House, and they hope to get a definitive answer.

But yesterday, one senior figure in the PDs could not be certain Noel Grealish would even be at tonight's meeting: "Well, I haven't heard that he's not going to be there."

Later, the same PD said Mr Grealish would definitely attend tonight's meeting, but the uncertainty was remarkable.

To be fair to Noel Grealish, he has never before given a hint that he subliminally harboured urges to grandstand. If anything, he was the opposite, and gave the distinct impression that he abhorred and avoided attention seeking behaviour.

Yet the whole country is now caught in the moment that he just can't get out of -- and we can only hope Mr Grealish will put us all out of our misery by midnight.

This rural TD, whose ambitions have never seemed to go beyond his backyard, makes an unlikely, even curious, national figure. He laid out his philosophy in the following few sentences: "You can stand up in the Dail and speak morning, noon and night. But if a politician loses contact with their constituents, then they are in trouble," he said.

"People are not interested in big names but in the people who work hard on the ground and are actively involved in local issues."

And, true to his word, Mr Grealish has not spoken about the great issues, or even many minor issues, in the Dail to which he was elected in 2002.

He was something of an indentured apprentice to Bobby Molloy, the former Fianna Fail minister and founder of the PDs, who was elected as a TD for Galway West for 30 years.

He heard a report on RTE's 'Morning Ireland' that Mr Molloy would not be running in the 2002 general election and Mr Molloy rang him at 11am. It was three weeks before the election.

In that helter-skelter election in May 2002, Noel Grealish got the second lowest number of first-preference votes of any candidate.

But he received 80pc of the first preferences in his local polling station at Carnmore National School. He was elected a TD for Galway West on the 15th count.

He even dreamed of instant promotion when he heard that Liz O'Donnell would not be seeking to be reappointed a junior minister. But the phone never rang.

Healthcare in Galway was his watchword, and Noel Grealish made sure that when Mary Harney became Minister for Health, his constituents were looked after.

Always agreeable and pleasant, Noel Grealish was viewed as less standoffish than other PDs and he never made a secret of his affection for all things Fianna Fail.

He was one of the few who didn't panic when the PDs were decimated at last year's general election; he simply reviewed his Fianna Fail options. But more ominously for his colleagues, he didn't see how the PDs could survive.

He has had talks with constituency colleague, Fianna Fail minister Eamon O Cuiv, and his moving to the senior party in government seemed inevitable.

Yet he was elected as a PD and it is not clear who he has consulted about any prospective move to another political party. He clearly hasn't spoken to party leader Ciaran Cannon, who has spoken in embarrassed ignorance about Mr Grealish's intentions. Although given the sensitivity of Mary Harney's position as a minister and the leader who welcomed him into the PDs, it is hard to believe that she has not been in touch with Mr Grealish.

If he does leave the PDs, the party has only one other elected parliamentarian, Mary Harney herself.

The two senators, Fiona O'Malley and the leader Ciaran Cannon, were both appointed.

As a piano player, Ciaran Cannon will know the melancholic chords when he tinkles 'The Party's Over', although by the nature of things many will blame Noel Grealish for delivering the coup de grace.

Yet rather than going quietly into the night, Noel Grealish has made tonight's party meeting a showdown.

Yet all this tension could, and should, have been resolved in a phone call: "Noel, are you staying or going?"

After his long and successful association with them, Mr Grealish surely owed his colleagues a direct and simple answer.

Now, 'Waiting for Noel Grealish' has turned his personal drama into a party crisis.