Unusually, neither American nor Irish diplomats had been prepared to divulge the nature of the gift.

However, using sources close to President Obama himself, The Mire has learned that the President gave the Taoiseach green cards for himself and his family.

“The President has also offered the Kennys couch space while they recover from the trauma of being economic migrants,” a source said. “They won’t overstay their welcome, will they?”

“The sound of Nama was the deciding factor. An Taoiseach would say it over and over again,” a source said.

“It’s true,” another source confirmed. “Nationalisation did nothing for him but he couldn’t get enough of saying Nama. He even said it to President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown to their complete confusion. .. those were happy times.”

Saying Nama repeatedly probably kept Mr Cowen sane, a leading psychologist told The Mire. “He was under extreme pressure and deeply unpopular,” he said. “Childishly repeating the word Nama would have helped him to cope.”

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Our Carbon Arseprint was the talk of Copenhagen yesterday as delegates at the UN’s 15th climate change conference considered ways that they could save the world from the consequences of our flatulence.

Regular readers of The Mire may recall that President Barack Obama revealed the dreadful consequences of our Carbon Arseprint at the UN’s General Assembly on Climate Change in September.

“Their bad diet, comfort eating and food poverty has meant they have more of a Carbon Arseprint than a Carbon Footprint,” Mr Obama said at the time.

However, the situation has worsened since then and a healthy eating campaign to increase intake of green vegetables has not helped the situation. “Mr Lenihan has no choice,” a senior civil servant said. “He has to lead by example and rein in flatulence. We all know to our cost now that flatulence leads to floods”

“For that reason this budget will see the abolition of tax on garlic,” the source continued. “A UK company has demonstrated that Allicin properties in garlic reduce flatulence by up to 90 per cent. Citizens will be encouraged to chew garlic through the day as Mr Lenihan has been doing for some time now.”

However, the source dismissed calls from Friends of the Earth for methods of tackling our Carbon Arseprint to be given legal standing. “Legal force does not have any force here,” he said.

“Control Mirish flatulence and you control climate change,” Mr Obama said, “Otherwise we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.”

President Obama was speaking after a leading climate change scientist admitted the Carbon Footprint model of measuring the human impact on global warming could not be applied to Mireland: “They have a unique situation. A bad diet made worse by comfort eating and food poverty has meant that they have more of a Carbon Arseprint than a Carbon Footprint.”

UN secretary general Ban Ki- moon was insistent that something had to be done about our Carbon Arseprint: “Now is the moment to act. We will soon reach the critical threshold, the consequences of which cannot be reversed. We simply must do something about Mireland and its crazy Carbon Arseprint.”

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said he accepted his share of responsibility for the country’s runaway flatulence: “But going forward we have to find a way to stop our Carbon Arseprint causing global warming or else we put at risk the survival of this planet.”

Mr Cowen told journalists that a tax on flatulence was “an issue for consideration in the context of the next budget. We need to be tough on flatulence and tough on the causes of flatulence.”

Last week a European expert on childhood flatulence told an audience in Dublin that the recession has led to to an increase in childhood flatulence here. Addressing the 19th annual World Conference on Childhood Flatulence he said: “Poorer children are more likely to suffer flatulence. Mireland already has one of the highest rates of childhood flatulence in the world and that will only increase as you get poorer and poorer and poorer which, by the way, is what you are doing.”[poll id="4"]