Whatever about the merits of Saturday's simulated nuclear accident as regards testing the national nuclear emergency plan, as a public relations exercise it came across as a genuine disaster.
Despite the fact Joe Jacob had been given advanced warning of the simulated incident, not to mention some six weeks to prepare his script following his infamous Marian Finucane interview, he remained as vague as ever regarding the advice to give the public in the case of a nuclear emergency.
Seven hours after the simulation began with an imaginary earthquake at the Wylfa nuclear power plant in Wales, the Minister of State for Energy could offer no more advice than "stay indoors".
All other information would be decided upon in the context of the incident, he said.
Well, he was asked, what of this incident?
What advice would be given, for instance, on food consumption, or the ingestion of iodine? Ah, he replied, "we are talking hypothetically at this point," and he wasn't willing to speak about matters hypothetical.
Journalists called to this media "briefing" were left scratching their heads at what Mr Jacob had described as "an exercise in information management".
It seemed advice couldn't be given on a hypothetical situation, even in the context of a hypothetical situation.
It didn't quite help to secure what was one of the Minister's stated aims of the day, namely restoring public confidence in the country's "total state of readiness" for a nuclear emergency.
The second objective, he said, was to "fine-tune" the National Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents, to give it its official title.
To meet both goals, the Department of Public Enterprise not only drafted in a team of consultants to evaluate the State's emergency response but also an external PR firm to manage the media's.
The exercise began at 5.15 a.m. with a phone call from consultants Environmental Resources Management (ERM) to a duty manager within the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII).
This triggered a further series of calls, and the Emergency Response Co-Ordinating Committee - comprising representatives of Government Departments, the Garda S∅ochβna and Met ╔ireann, among other bodies - was scrambled to the RPII's headquarters in Clonskeagh, Dublin.
ERM's director, Mr Sean O'Riordain, said relevant personnel were alerted to the day of the exercise, but not the time.
While he would not say how good the initial response was, he confirmed that different officials "answered the phones".
Adding to the crisis atmosphere was the fact that the press briefing, shortly after noon, was conducted in a cramped front lobby of the RPII building. The media was not allowed upstairs to see the committee at work.
Mr Jacob emphasised the exercise was "not a reaction to anything".
And just in case minds were turning to his RT╔ radio interview, he added hastily: "it's not a reaction to the events of the 11th of September".
He added that he expected a report on the exercise to be available within days. Soon after, he said, the public would receive their long-awaited information leaflets on the emergency plan.
In the meantime, the public have at least learned one fact: Wylfa and not Sellafield is the closest nuclear plant to the Republic. So it wasn't a completely wasted exercise then.