The Minister For Lip Service To Broken Promises Will See You Now

The Minister For Best Practice at the Department of Doublespeak & Prevarication is to introduce a bill to make it legal to speak ill of the dead, provided no objections are received from the Guild of Undertakers by midnight tonight.

“If was the very least we could do,” Simon Coveney said, “if we weren’t going to do anything useful?”

Separately the Minister for Lip Service To Broken Promises is bringing a plan to cabinet to give a pay rise to politicians who can simultaneously speak out of both sides of their mouth on the housing crisis.

“This vital skill is in high demand these days,” Darragh O’Brien said, “especially on social media where you have to be all things to everyone. For this reason I’ll be proposing a 5% pay increase for any minister who can ignore the elephant in the room while still calling for ‘an honest debate’.”

The bill will additionally abolish the law stipulating that ‘whatever you say, say nothing’. “A position,” O’Brien said firmly, “that has been the government’s policy for far too long.”

“I think these initiatives will finally, silence all those,” he added, “who say this government is simply refusing to ‘get off the pot’!”

(Issued by the Office for Foot Dragging and Kite Flying.)