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A screen grab from The Irish Times this evening

Following on from the publication of the Banking Inquiry report…

The Irish Times has published a video of witnesses who used the word ‘regret’.

The video included clips of Gerry O’Regan, former editor of the Irish Independent, Tim Vaughan, editor of the Irish Examiner, and Ed Mulhall, former head of news and current affairs at RTE.

The report found that property revenue for the Irish Times ranged from €10 million in 2002 to €22 million in 2006 – at its peak, accounting for 17% of the newspaper’s total revenue from all sources. The equivalent figures for the Irish Examiner and Independent News and Media were 7% and 14% respectively.

But what of former managing director of the Irish Times Maeve Donovan and former editor of the Irish Times Geraldine Kennedy – who don’t feature in the video?

Well, they had no regrets.

From Ms Donovan’s testimony…

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Good times

Regrets, they’ve had a few. But can you guess how many? (Irish Times)

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21 thoughts on “No Regrets”

    1. Sheikh Yabooti

      I’m quoting David McWilliams in today’s Indo, who paraphrases it well:

      “…if banks make silly and greedy mistakes, then they should pay for them. Such is the iron law of capitalism. When you make bad investments, you lose. If someone else subsidises losses indefinitely and gives the bill for banks’ bad investments TO PEOPLE WHO HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THOSE INVESTMENTS, then you are destroying the basic fabric of commerce.”

      (My rage capitalisation)

      FF marked out the hole, IMF held the gun pointed at FG, who were too scared to turn and hit them with the shovel (like the Greeks), Joe Taxpayer climbed in & meekly pulled the soil in over himself.
      So it goes.

        1. classter

          He was referencing Playboy of the Western World & Christy Mahon’s outlandish claims of having killed his father with a shovel.

          Or something.

    2. dave g k

      Maeve and Gerry were the two cants who when they saw the pot was boiling over reacted by turning up the temperature to the max in the hope of getting a return on their investment.

      It was vulgar hardcore house porn with a Nigerian Prince asking for your PIN.

  2. Diddy

    Banks and newspapers are privately owned enterprise. The main share of the blame for the mess must fall on the guy who’s job it was to police them, the financial regulator. He had one job and failed spectacularly.

    1. Mike

      banks
      developers
      regulator
      politicians/legislators
      judiciary
      media/journalists

      not all obviously, but most suck

    2. Sheikh Yabooti

      ….and here we are, again:

      Michael Lewis summed it up brilliantly in his book Boomerang, some of which was reprinted in Vanity Fair. Here’s the bit about Neary:

      In (Colm) McCarthy’s view, the dominant narrative inside the head of the average Irish citizen—and his receptiveness to the story Kelly was telling—changed at roughly 10 o’clock in the evening on October 2, 2008. On that night, Ireland’s financial regulator, a lifelong Central Bank bureaucrat in his 60s named Patrick Neary, came live on national television to be interviewed. The interviewer sounded as if he had just finished reading the collected works of Morgan Kelly. Neary, for his part, looked as if he had been dragged from a hole into which he badly wanted to return. He wore an insecure little mustache, stammered rote answers to questions he had not been asked, and ignored the ones he had been asked.

      A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. Two weeks earlier the collapse of Lehman Brothers had cast doubt on banks everywhere. Ireland’s banks had not been managed to withstand doubt; they had been managed to exploit blind faith. Now the Irish people finally caught a glimpse of the guy meant to be safeguarding them: the crazy uncle had been sprung from the family cellar. Here he was, on their televisions, insisting that the Irish banks were “resilient” and “more than adequately capitalized” … when everyone in Ireland could see, in the vacant skyscrapers and empty housing developments around them, evidence of bank loans that were not merely bad but insane. “What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they’d ever seen this little man,” says McCarthy. “And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.”

      3. Lilly

        LOL, I remember seeing Neary that night and thinking exactly along those lines. What a weasel. Is he in Mountjoy yet?

        1. Dav

          he’s on the golf course, laughing about his great pension with his bank director mates, the elites party while the citizens pick up the tab.

    3. CiunCainteach

      That’s akin to saying that it is the Gardaí’s fault that crime exists. The banks and financial institutions have agency and didn’t act responsibly. Of course the regulator should be held accountable, as should successive governments that failed to provide it with adequate resources. We can’t blame the situation we are in predominantly on the watchdogs. We need to recognise that to be effective, a watchdog needs to have both the support and resources to perform their duties effectively.

  3. Truth in the News

    A long last the organs of the fouth estate have been found out, and those who
    tell us who should run the country and how to run it should be weeded out and
    exposed, a large section of the Irish Media are rotten to the core, the rubbish
    they wote hyping of a non existant celtic tiger has come back to haunt them, and
    if the public boycotted them, they’d be gone in a week, where was “RTE Invetigates” in all of this……?

  4. Andy

    Dr Mercile’s evidence quoted a sum total of Zero times in the banking inquiry report.

    Found that odd…..

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