Speaking to the Dail this afternoon, Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, tried to clear up the confusion surrounding state training agency FÁS after the cabinet reshuffle.

Mary Coughlan made her feelings clear in the Dail today

Critics suggested that the Taoiseach had deliberately made the issue bewildering so it would be more difficult for any futher corruption to be unconvered, but Coughlan denied that was the case.

“At the moment FÁS is what it is, we all know that. And as long as FÁS is FÁS it will remain FÁS but who is responsible for it? Well, that’s simple. It is currently under the auspices of the people who have a duty of care for it and that will indeed be the case going forward. One might ask if Batt O’Keefe is the man through which all Fás related queries should be made and I can confirm this is the case.

However, to make sure that nobody is left in any doubt about what the next step might be, were there to be a next step, then Eamon O’Cuiv will be taking on board the goings-on at FÁS and will liaise on a regular basis with Batt O’Keefe and myself with regard to the agency’s future endeavours”.

When asked why there were so many chiefs Coughlan replied “Are you really suggesting we don’t need the chiefs? It’s all well and good saying you need more Indians but if Indians are so great then how come they live on reservations and got their arses kicked by European interlopers? Perhaps if the Indians had more chiefs then there’d be more Indians now and in this time of great financial hardship and increasing unemployment I think the one thing we can agree on is that more Indians are exactly what we need … in the long term. For now we have chiefs”.

Coughlan was heckled from the far side of the house by Fine Gael TD Leo Varadkar who said “The deputy is no Jodie Foster. She’s no Alyssa Milano or Drew Barrymore. She’s like the girl from Diff’rent Strokes and we’ll all read her boring articles in the Irish Times after she’s resorted to soft porn and died of a heroin overdose”.

Meanwhile Fianna Fail sources say that Junior Minister Conor Lenihan “threw a mighty strop” after he was overlooked by Brian Cowen. Lenihan had booked the upstairs of the Morgue in Templeogue for a huge celebration party with cuisine to be shipped in from as far abroad as Silvio’s next door.

“He cut a lonely sight stomping the ‘Well done, Conor’ balloons, let me tell you”, laughed the insider until you got that feeling you get when somebody’s putting on a laugh so long it becomes horribly uncomfortable.