Under a new edict from Batt O’Keefe, Minister for Education, Science and The Proud Inability to Correctly Pronounce Words Ending in ‘ION’, all schools will close from Wednesday next  until the end of time because “it’s been terrible windy the last few days.”

It's okay, none of them are Protestant

Speaking slurringly to the Irish Sentinel in the wee hours of  Saturday  morning, Mr O’Keefe said that while the main reason behind his radical shutting down of the entire primary and secondary education systems was the slightly inclement weather, there are “millons and billons of other reasons. Millons and billons of them.”

Pressed for examples, the Minister said,  “C’mere, I was only having the babysither reading to me from that Irish Times yoke d’other day about how all dese unemployed fellas are going back and doin that layving thing so as they can go to college to be staring at all the lovely young gash. Now we can’t be havin’ that at all. And if they can’t go to school sure they can’t do the layving and if they can’t do the layving then the gash is safe so it is. And den dere’s dem praists running all dem schools. Any day now the Irish people’ll rise up from their decades of  rosary and apathy and realise that havin’ a pack of preverts lookin’ after dere small fellas is no good ting and sure den where’ll we be? May as well be dog wide and close the feckin’ places down now so as we avoid any hassle, like.”

When it was put to ‘Batt’ that a complete dismantling of the country’s educational apparatus may not sit well with Brian Cowen’s  knowledge economy, the minster’s response was both bullish and drunken. “We live in a country where a man barely able to speak the official language can be rised up to the post of government Minister. All this edumication malrkey is overrighted! And feckin’ Lipsy knows it too. He’ll be behind me all the way.”

However, in a statement this morning Mr O’Keefe said: “You make decisions and then when circumstances change, you change your opinion. It’s not quite as windy today, I’m not so feckin’ langered and Lipsy thought me idea was nawful, so I’ve changed me opinion, like.”

Ireland’s overcrowded, underfunded, overseen by evil schools open as normal this morning.