The offer comes after the newspaper misrepresented a story from a Polish newspaper about Magda*, an unemployed Polish woman living in Donegal.

“They got the story completely wrong when they translated it,” the head of the language school said.

“So it occurred to us that we might be able to get their stories right by translating them,” he added reasonably.

*not her real name

“We would like the unemployed to know that their surly, demoralised, slouching in empty shopping centres is not helpful,” a Department of Social Protection source said.

“It’s not as if they’re ever going to work again so they really need to impress the employed people who pay their welfare bill,” he continued.

The source suggested that unemployed people should do menial tasks for the employed such as carrying their groceries or shining their shoes.

“Please attend to your personal hygiene before approaching the employed,” the source added.

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.

“This is no less than a cynical ploy to get people off the live register by killing them,” a Fine Gael spokesman said.

However, a Government spokesman accused Fine Gael of playing politics with people’s lives. “People have lost their livelihoods. The economy is in tatters. The healthy orange glow of a sunbed tan could be the little lift that helps someone to continue in times of great adversity,” he said.

Earlier, the government spokesman said there was a clear need to transform the country into a leisure society. “For that reason we are offering free sunbed sessions to the unemployed. Those eligible will also receive a complimentary cocktail swizzle stick.”

Minister for Health Mary Harney was not available for comment.

Fas is now preparing a campaign to attract Revolution Tutors from overseas and hopes to role out courses in revolution for the new unemployed early next year.

“People fail to see what great opportunities exist for revolutionaries in this country,” a Fas spokesman said. “A few weeks of flag-waving, a failed rebellion and you are made.”

“These positions carry with them tangible benefits for generations of your family to come. Your unborn grandchildren will be government ministers,” he added.

The spokesman dismissed the suggestion that people here are too docile for revolution even when faced with regular church and state scandals and draconian budgets. “We just need the right type of person to realise that this presents great opportunities for personal enrichment,” he said.

Hairdressers have recruited extra staff for the day while coffee shops are hopeful that cappucino and latte sales will be at a level not seen since the height of the boom.

A number of enterprising people who have become unemployed recently have offered a range of services to the public servants to help them get through their one day strike.

“I’m happy to man the picket for them while they do a bit of shopping,” an unemployed barrister told The Mire. “If they prefer, I could go shopping for them while they man the picket.”

Other unemployed people have offered to fetch soup and hot whiskies for the striking public servants. “We’ll happily do that for tips. We’ll take any small change,” a former developer said.

Any public servants who have been shopping in Asda in the North recently are asked to bring foam cups with them for the hot whiskies.

Small retail units are hopeful that the public servants will boost their meagre sales. Many shops have banner signs saying: ‘Public servants welcome here’.

“We’re offering great incentives to get them into the shops,” one retailer said. “We know they have money to spend. Our only fear is that they are so angry at having secure pensionable employment that they might spend the whole day on strike.”

A trade union spokesman acknowledged that the strike would cause hardship to people who depended most on public services. “However,” he added, “at least public service pay, work conditions, pension provision and lack of productivity hits everyone equally.

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.

Con Sultans have played a key role in every stage of the nation’s development and their importance is emphasised by the fact that An Bord Snip – who are themselves eminent Con Sultans – believe they are too important to cut.

Typically, a Government department or private company will call in the Con Sultans when the business model is in trouble. After an extremely expensive but invaluable review the Con Sultans will confirm that the business is indeed in trouble before moving on to the next challenging project.

“Con Sultans helped to get this nation where it is today. As we face in to the problems of huge unemployment and a dysfunctional economy we need them more than ever,” An Bord Snip said.

“We know the gloom is hard on many people,” a leading Con Sultan said, “but we see it as an opportunity.”

“Because of the boom years we don’t have up to date analysis of the effects of long term unemployment but we are aware of the likely increase in depression, anxiety, despondency, inertia low self esteem and listlessness,” a HSE spokesperson said.

“We have run into a stumbling block in that we don’t yet have enough long term unemployed people yet to base a study on but we have reached the conclusion that we can overcome this problem by using public servants as a stand-in for the study group,” she added.

“All indications suggest that the typical profile of someone who has been in the public service for several years and somebody who has been unemployed for a like period would be quite interchangeable. We are lucky to have this valuable resource to base our studies on.”

“You have to remember that our track record up to this point was based on qualifying people for jobs they were not competent to do. We are justifiably proud of our track record in this regard. Just look around any workplace in Mireland and you will see people employed to do jobs they can’t do. This programme has been a runaway success.”

“The new situation, however, presents a unique set of problems. We now have to qualify people for jobs that don’t and won’t exist. Clearly this is a completely different ballgame. We have to reinvent ourselves to face these challenges.”

The spokesman said that all education bodies were going to hold a detailed review of their procedures and philosophies and were working with highly qualified consultants to produce a consultation document on possible ways to proceed with considering undertaking the review.