Hard pressed directors of NAMA have been saved from death by a 70% pay increase, 3 months after their appointment. The Minister For Finance defended the emergency payment in the face of stupid opposition cat calls.

"Tibbles": NAMA Director-owned Ocelot Whose Death Has Been Narrowly Avoided

"It has become clear that the fee we originally set for the Chairman of NAMA (€100k) would not be sufficient to maintain the level of larks’ tongue consumption which international class bankers have an absolute right to expect," explained Mr. Lenihan. "After all if you want to manage €54 billion in assets, you can’t be expected to do it on an empty stomach, or without at least a moderate level of ermine".

The increased fees are being blamed on the fact that there would be more work for the directors of NAMA to do than had originally been thought to be the case. However officials have assured The Emergency that this is a one off arrangement and that the whole business will be over by Christmas. We were given this in writing and have in our hand the piece of paper signed this morning in Merrion Square and promising credit in our time.

In this sketch from Series 1 Episode 6, Enda Kenny goes on a search the renegade Colonel Cowen that brings him deep into The Heart Of Darkness.

 

 Enda Kenny: Apocalypse Now [4:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This episode first broadcast April 18th 2009 on Newstalk 106-108 FM. The Emergency is broadcast every Saturday on Newstalk at 11:30 am and is available as a podcast from iTunes or use this URL in your podcast software:

http://newstalk.ie/newstalk/podcasts/39/the-emergency.xml

© 2009 The Emergency

The Minister For Wild Guessing, Brian Lenihan, said in a speech to Credit Union officials on Saturday that other European governments are “Green with envy” at “the extent to which Irish taxpayers will allow themselves to be skewered through from anterior to posterior by harsh fiscal rectitude measures”.

A delighted Mister Lenihan proudly boasted than Europe is “amazed” at “the amount of pain” Irish people will bear. “That is our great strength as a nation”, he pointed out gleefully. “Even when the British lefts we were still capable of adopting our own government as an oppressor and continue to display our fortitude beneath the heel of leather boot.”

Mister Lenihan said that if the French Government had introduced the public sector pension levy that there would be “riots in the street”. He beamed with hubris as he announced “The entire world is the most fecked it has been since 1929, but nowhere else is as bad as Ireland. The Irish people should be proud of its government, of itself and of it’s uniquely high threshold for injustice in the civilised world”.

The full text of Mister Lenihan’s speech is likely shortly to be available hand written in red on a scrap of paper pinned to the back of a blue pinstriped suit worn by an inverted man hanging from a lamp post outside the GPO.