The Irish Ministry of Culture announced an ambitious ten-year plan to regain the country's literary standing through state subsidies for meme production.

"Irish writers like James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Edna O'Brien are known the world over for their vivid language, dense imagery, and deep spiritual yearnings," said Cath na Ceilin, Undersecretary of Emoticons & Avatars. "Goodbye to all that. If Ireland wants to maintain its foremost position in the literature of the 21st century, we simply must learn to be stupider."

Despite some promising entries in the Eurovision Meme Contest, Ireland has thus far failed to produce any memes of global significance. The nation's last great hope, an animated GIF of a real rabbit chewing the face off of a stuffed rabbit, stalled at #171 in the worldwide meme rankings. "Too cerebral," said na Ceilin.

The Ministry hopes that the new O'RLY Prize for Memetic Idiocy will lower the level of verbal discourse in Ireland and stimulate meme production for both the domestic and export markets. "I'm confident Ireland will soon be as influential a force in world memery as we have been in fields of actual value to human beings," na Ceilin said. "Just the other day, I was speaking with some idealistic young memers in Cork who are doing exciting work with a picture of a very fat man wearing a comically unflattering tie-dye bodysuit. It's dreamers like that who will prove that Ireland can be as stupid as any nation in the world."

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