The four main parties have announced plans to ensure that none of the lessons of the economic crisis will in any way affect their plans to inflict yet more damage on the country. A spokesman for the parties said: “It’s very clear, with the Troika about to leave next month and the property market in Dublin recovering, that the potential to get back to our usual short term nonsense is there. This opportunity for Irish politicians must be seized!”

Sources in both the government and opposition are agreed that the following measures should be pursued by the political parties.

1. Political reform. The government is particularly proud of the fact that after nearly three years in office, and plenty of shape throwing about “the New Politics” and that, not only has the government blocked almost all devolution of power, it has actually managed to centralise power even more, to such a degree that now even most of the cabinet are just as uninvolved in decision making as say, your average voter on the 46A, or an Irish bank regulator.

2. Economic Planning. The opposition has contributed towards the plan by telling voters that whilst property taxes are in principle a good idea, it is never a good time to introduce them. The opposition parties have also done their bit to keep alive the “Yes, you can keep your low tax cake and eat a high public spending cake at the same time” ethos of the Ahern years alive. A particular nod at opposition politicians who say that government should not be focussing on water charges but making our water system work, deliberately ignoring the fact that we don’t charge for water being the key reason our water system is malfunctioning.

Ireland’s economic competitors have applauded the stalwart efforts of Ireland’s political class to wreck the country once again. A leading member of the Lithuanian government remarked: “We’d like to thank the people of Ireland for this wonderful spectacle as to how to make an absolute balls of a really good situation with a gutless, intellectually vapid political class. A whole generation of young Lithuanian children now go to bed in fear of “The Irishman under the bed who will wreck our current budget surplus” if they are naughty!”