SO, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS...

(Funtime is over - back to work)

A retired High Court judge will hold an investigation. The conclusions of that investigation will be presented to the Minister for Justice. The Minister for Justice will then place these conclusions into his mouth and chew them into a fine paste. Then the Minister will proceed to sculpt what remains of the conclusions into papier mache lumps and stick them under the desk in his office going forward.

GARDA INQUIRIES

(pictured: Garda pal Boyler)

I'm a great fan of the Gardaí and would be more than happy to help them with any inquiries but I'm not sure it’s right for them to be hacking my emails. I expressed my concern to the justice minister and he told me to inform the relevant authorities. I asked him who the relevant authorities were and he said that the relevant authorities were the Gardaí. I asked him if he really thought that was a prudent action to take and he said he did. I said ‘what about if I tell the Ombudsman instead?’ and the minster just laughed.

I didn't fancy going to the Gardaí to tell the Gardaí that I suspected the Gardaí of reading my emails so instead I went to see Boyler. Do you remember Boyler? You do, Kieran Boylan. Yeah, mad bastard he was. He’s doing grand. He’s a big name on the international haulage scene apparently. Anyway, Boyler is pretty tight with the Gardaí so I asked him if he’d have a word with them. He said he was heading to the station to get his passport renewed the next day so he’d see what could be done. He also suggested I might make a gift of a few bottles of whiskey. ‘They love to have a bit of JD around’, said Boyler, ‘they keep it out back where they store the old Heavy Gang tool kits, lost penalty points and Kerry babies conceived by heteropaternal superfecundation.’

So, I went to the offie to pick up a few bottles and then I headed up to the station to make my offering. ‘Did the McBreartys serve you these after hours?’ I was asked.

‘No, I …no …I just wanted to….’.

‘Wanted to what?’

‘Wanted to let you know that I appreciate the job you are doing and I…’

‘…and that you killed Sophie Toscan du Plantier?’

‘No, Jesus, no, take it easy, Christ.’

‘You killed Christ?’

‘Pardon? What?’

‘You heard him lads.’

Well, I’m now doing a stretch for deicide but the good news is that the Gardaí annual arrest quota is through the roof. Apparently one God killer is worth several hundred drug busts. I’m really not sure what I’m doing here but, in a funny way, I’m glad to have helped the Gardaí with their inquiries. As Boyler said when he dropped in to visit me last week, ‘it shouldn't be long before that crowd from the Ombudsman Commission take a similar attitude’.

O'DREARY

Another tribunal is afoot. It's being planned right now. They're calling it the tribunal to end all tribunals, the ultimate tribunal, the tribunal's tribunal, Tribunal the Barbarian. Its official title though will be the O'Dreary Tribunal, as it will be chaired by Judge Donal O'Dreary. The tribunal's aim will be to find out, once and for all, who it was exactly 'banjaxed the nation'. It is said that suspects will undergo thorough interrogations. However, an avant-garde approach in truth seeking will see the suspects being referred to as 'clients' and the interrogations being called 'chats' and the 'chats' not being all that thorough. No need to be adversarial I suppose, you catch more bees with honey.

The clients will drop into Donal for chats (receiving generous financial compensation for the time taken to do so) and it is hoped that a culprit or culprits will be identified during the course of these chats so that something might be done maybe going forward you never know like.

A valid concern expressed by one of our nation's leaders is that 'it was probably a hape of lads that did for lovely old Ireland' and that to identify these 'lads' by name would be 'commercially insensitive' as it would dissuade this self same 'hape of lads' from investing in 'lovely old Ireland' again.

Do not worry though, a solution to this dilemma has been devised and it is a solution that is typically Irish in its lateral cunning. The hope is, you see, if you follow me now, ...the hope is that the suspects, I mean clients, will put their interrogation, I mean chat, wages, I mean compensation, back into lovely old Ireland and reinflate the property bubble, I mean market, going forward.

That's the idea anyway. Unless, as Judge O'Dreary pointed out himself, the culprits turn out to be Travellers. 'If it turns out to be a bunch of dirty knackers that wrecked the place', said O'Dreary from the doorstep of his Killiney home, 'I'll come down on them like a ton of bricks. A TON OF BRICKS!'