“Everyone gets along now apart from the Greens,” a source said. “It’s as though we’re as one.”

“It’s great craic around the Cabinet table,” the source continued. “Nearly everyone can sing or tell a joke.”

“He’s not Minister for Everything. I’m still here. I’m STILL HERE,” Environment Minister John Gormley said.

The Green Party leader was known as the Minister for Snow during last January’s big freeze but seems to have disappeared this year.

“We are inundated with calls from people asking if he ever existed at all,” a psychologist said.

“They are quite naturally angry with their imaginations as they hold them responsible for imagining him,” he added.

“This is a great honour for Mr Gormley,” a Green source said. “In our world it doesn’t get any better than being a plant.”

It is understood that Mr Gormley will remain in his role as leader of the Green Party.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Brian Cowen is believed to be considering giving the Greens another junior ministry position to keep the coalition on course.

“He’s considering a rotating junior ministry,” a source said. “Nothing important – they can make the title up themselves – but they could swap it around so they’d all get a ministerial pension. The Taoiseach likes to keep everyone happy.”

Minister Gormley was yesterday put in charge of the National Emergency Response Committee charged with tackling the big freeze. “I am seeking the Cabinet’s approval for a compulsory purchase order of all processed foods with high salt content,” he said.

“These foods would then be distributed to the local authorities who will use them on the roads until such time as we can source more grit,” he added.

A spokesman for the local authorities said grit had been in short supply here since the 1980s. “What little there is is not true grit,” he said. “It is shit grit.”

Asked if he had any advice for people stranded by the bad weather, Mr Gormley told them to empty their fridges and kitchen cupboards. “Throw snack foods in front of you on pavements and streets until you reach main roads,” he said.

Mr Gormley acknowledged that people who did not include high salt breads, cereals, snacks and ready meals in their diet were probably doomed. “This is no time to go organic,” he said.

Incredibly, Environment Minister and Green Party leader John Gormley, Energy Minister Eamon Ryan, Nice Fresh Food Minister Trevor Sargent and Senator Dan Boyle were all found to have entered their neighbours’ back gardens late last night to urinate in their compost bins.

“We caught them wet-handed but we are still trying to establish whether or not this is a crime,” a Garda source said.

It seems unlikely that the owners of the compost bins will want to see the Green leadership charged. “It was positively heroic, and great for accelerating the breakdown of compost,” one neighbour said.

However, The Mire has learned that Mr Gormley may have a more serious case to answer than his colleagues as his neighbours don’t have compost facilities. “It would appear that Mr Gormley somehow gained access to their house and urinated in their highly sophisticated kitchen sink waste disposal unit,” the Garda source said. “The owners are distraught.”

“How ridiculous,” Mr Gormley is understood to have commented. “Imagine living beside me and not having a compost bin.”

A leading political analyst told The Mire that the Green leadership was desperately trying to prove to its grassroots that it remains relevant and worthy of support. “This could swing it for them,” he said.