SOLAS, which replaces the now legendary training agency FÁS, has been tasked with training people for jobs that won’t exist.

A SOLAS source admitted that FÁS was a hard act to follow.

“They are legends,” the source said. “Even in the boom the only jobs they created were their own.”

“Fortunately we have the same management as FÁS so we should be able to maintain their high standards,” the source added.

SOLAS, which is Irish for light, will replace FÁS which was also tasked with training people for ‘jobs’- although none are understood to have materialised.

“Jobs are an elusive concept Mr Bruton refers to regularly,” a psychologist said. “We have no idea what it means. It might be his safe word.”

Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties Minister Bruton said creating a new agency to train people for something unknown is one of the most important decisions the government has taken.

“They think they’re so great with their ‘land of the long white cloud,’ but we’ll show them,” an official said.

The official said Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation Minister Richard Bruton had called on the IDA and Fáilte Ireland to launch an international campaign highlighting Ireland’s cloudiness.

The campaign, called Forty Shades of Clouds, will start this week.  “The Kiwis won’t know what hit them,” the official said. “One long white cloud hasn’t a chance against forty shades of clouds.”

The OECD official called for Irish dole rates to be cut to encourage people back to work.

“There’s work?” an unemployed man said. “It’s a miracle.”

Church authorities said, however, that it would be premature to describe the vision of jobs in Ireland as a miracle.

Scientists were also sceptical. “This is superstitious mumbo-jumbo,” a scientist said.

“People with jobs will travel the country holding roadside gatherings,” a Jobs Initiative source said.

“The gatherings will be told what it is like to work in the hope that some record of it will still exist when employment returns,” the source added.

The source insisted that the initiative would be cost neutral. “There is no question of anyone getting pay or a job out of this,” he said.

Their concern follows the announcement that the IDA and Enterprise Ireland will create more jobs than there are people by 2015.

“This is a high risk strategy,” a midwife said. “Our wombs are already operating at capacity what with the recession and there being nothing  good on the tele.”

“What about the fathers? Why doesn’t anyone care about the fathers?” Irish Times columnist John Waters would probably say.

A leading banker told The Mire that the fundamentals of banking had changed so much recently that it was by no means clear that bank staff had jobs to do. “Let’s face it, we don’t lend money, any more and there aren’t too many people mad enough to deposit money with us,” he said. “We can’t give people pay increases for jobs that don’t exist.”

However, a trade union official, while acknowledging an essential truth about the current nature of banking, said the simple fact that people had offices to go to was enough to prove that they had jobs. “These people have jobs,” he said. “They might not have work but they do have jobs.”

He said that questioning fundamentals like what people do and whether it is needed is a “toxic proposal” that would mean descending below a “threshold of decency in the country”.

“It has reached the stage in public discourse in Mireland where the most preposterous proposals can be put forward and accepted as being legitimate and I reject that absolutely and completely,” he said.

“Our members have been dedicated public servants all their lives,” a source said. “What happens if they take early retirement or redundancy and then seek employment in the private sector? What chance would they have?”

“We are talking about people who may have no notion of productivity. It would be reckless for anyone to employ them.”

He said the union understood that the economy was in crisis and would engage with the government if these work experience schemes were established.

He said it wasn’t beyond all possibility that some public servants could adapt to life in the private sector. “They have to be given a chance. We want to see our members gently exposed to work under adult supervision. A team of psychologists would monitor the outcome and their input would form the basis of decisions on who should take redundancy.”

“Those who perform well would be encouraged to leave the public service while those who struggle with the work concept will be encouraged to stay,” he concluded.

In the face of the onslaught from Fine Gael and Labour Mr Lenihan resorted to the delusional stance of stating that the report represented an endorsement of current Government policy.

“This is clearly nonsense but he had to say something,” a Finance Department source said. “To be honest he doesn’t know where the opposition are coming from on this. I mean, there are no jobs out there. What class of eejit would resign from a well paid job at a time like this?”

“This is not the time for a career change. It’s time to sit tight and try not to draw attention to yourself,” the source added.

The scheme will allow companies to receive payments of up to €200 per employee per week provided the companies were not in financial difficulties before July of last year.

The Mire has learned that senior management at all of Mireland’s major banks are keen to apply for the scheme although many would say they were in financial difficulties for several years. A government caveat – that the companies involved “must be judged to be sound, robust and have sustainable business models” – would also stand against them.