Lack of regulatory transparency hindered newspapers, says Irish Examiner editor
The editor of the Irish Examiner said today that the newspaper could not have known that Ireland's banks were insolvent, until it was too late.
Tim Vaughan said the paper had to rely on financial regulators to do their job - and could not have foreseen the crash.
He was giving evidence to the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry about the role of the media in the run-up to the property crash.
He said that no newspaper would have been able to predict the magnitude of the property crash, until it was all too obvious.
"At the time, we had little or no reason to believe that key figures in our financial regulatory infrastructure were not functioning in the best interest of the State, and its citizens," he said.
"Nor was there a level of transparency around the regulatory process, or our banking system, which would have allowed us to access the information which subsequently emerged after the crash and too late when the damage was done."
