Enda Kenny famously once declared that, "Paddy likes to know what the story is". Sadly, Paddy hasn't got much chance of that when our leader can't even get his own story straight.

The Taoiseach has been caught red-handed, saying one thing to the Irish people and another to a conference of elite bankers -- leaving us wondering if we can trust anything that comes out of his mouth from now on.

Kenny's double-speak is all there in black and white. In his address to the nation last month, he looked straight into the camera and bluntly told us: "You are not responsible for the crisis."

Now it appears that Enda may have been looking down his nose at us all along. At the exclusive World Economic Forum in Davos, he gravely informed his audience that Irish people had gone mad with greed, borrowed crazy amounts of cash and essentially only had themselves to blame.

So what does Enda really believe?

All we know for sure is that he is scared to tell his audience anything that he thinks they might not want to hear. He seems to forget that in the modern world of communications, it doesn't matter whether you're talking from your own office or a hall full of billionaire economists -- everything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.

It would be interesting to know if the Taoiseach includes himself among the people who, according to him, lost their marbles during the boom. After all, a recent investigation revealed that he owns a house, an apartment, an office and a field in Mayo. That may not be a property portfolio to get him on NAMA's Top Ten list, but it's certainly beyond most people's ambitions -- and the collapse of the market has presumably put a sizeable dent in his net worth as well.

The truth is that Kenny went over the top in both speeches. Of course a small minority of Irish people did go mad, buying up multiple properties that left them wide open to financial ruin. However, the majority borrowed substantial sums of money purely to put a roof over their family's heads.

Kenny's clanger is set to haunt him for a long time, but it's just the latest in a long line of verbal gaffes that suggests his Government is starting to feel the strain after less than a year in office. Last week Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore pleaded with the opposition to "pull on the green jersey", exactly the sort of feeble remark he would have slammed when he was on the other side of the Dail.

Michael Noonan casually suggested that many young people were emigrating as a lifestyle choice, while Leo Varadkar claimed that "a bomb will go off" if we burn the Anglo bondholders -- less than a year after he promised that the banks would not get another red cent.

On a lighter note, the Taoiseach addressed a conference about getting more women involved in politics -- and proceeded to alienate the entire room by making remarks about junior minister Kathleen Lynch's "flaming red hair".

Taken individually, these cringeworthy remarks may not seem like a big deal. Add them together and it looks as if foot-in-mouth disease has broken out in Government Buildings -- not exactly great timing when yet another crucial EU referendum may be coming down the line.

When Enda Kenny insisted this week that Ireland will pay all its debts, he declared, "We are not going to have the word 'defaulter' written across our foreheads". The Taoiseach would do well to remember that we don't have the word 'fools' written across ours.