“I Definitely Won’t Regret Promising Nationwide Vaccination By September”

IGNORING the frantic, panicked waving from cabinet colleagues and the HSE, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has doubled down on his confirmation that everyone in Ireland will be offered a vaccine by September 2021 safe in the knowledge such promises could never backfire in any way.

“Everyone will be offered a vaccine in Ireland by September of this year,” confirmed Donnelly, after kindly being offered a 14th chance by patient media reporters to add a caveat or two to his statement, for fear he was setting himself up for an embarrassing climb down in the near future.

“Ah yeah feck it, let’s say end of July actually, no, end of the week,” added Donnelly with the sort of confidence that suggested he believed nobody would remember any of this come September 2021 or that it was impossible to record anything he says.

“Why does he do this every time?” cried several government press officials helplessly looking on.

“No, the Minister didn’t say words like ‘everyone’ ‘offer’ ‘vaccine’ ‘Ireland’ or ‘ by September’,” a spokesperson fired off in emails to journalists in between vomiting from stress and throwing darts at a poster of a ginger egg on a nearby wall.

“What does ‘of this year’ mean anyway, 1984 is year, but it’s also a book! So look it, we’re not making any big promises on the vaccines. And anyway the Minister could have been talking about a vaccine against being from Cork, who’s to say he meant Covid-19? ‘Everyone’ is a subjective term; it could mean any number from 3 people to 5 million but Christ, he didn’t mean 5 million!” panicked another spokesperson.

High-fiving himself and asking himself if he ever gets tired of being so good at this Ministering of Healthing business, Donnelly left the Department of Health for the evening cupping his hands and voicing fake waves of cheers and applause.