Story was about banks, not individuals, claims ex-newspaper editor

FORMER Sunday Business Post editor Ian Kehoe told a High Court jury that articles in the newspaper in March 2015 were not about businessman Denis O’Brien but about Ireland and a report that “cast a lie” about what the banks were telling everyone during the financial crash in 2008.

Mr O’Brien has sued Post Publications, publisher of the SBP, claiming the articles wrongly meant he was among a “gang” of 22 borrowers who “wrecked the country” and they defamed him and injured his reputation.

The defence denies those meanings, defamation or malicious publication and has pleaded “fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest”.

Last Friday, Mr Kehoe said he and journalist Tom Lyons had discussed leaving Mr O’Brien out of the articles but decided he had to be left in because he was named in the report, given by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to the Government in November 2008, as among the 22 biggest borrowers with Irish banks in 2008.

There was an “immense fear factor” across the media around anything to do with Mr O’Brien and anything involving him had to “go through me” and lawyers. When Mr O’Brien’s name was mentioned, it was like being “in a fire station with a light going around and around”. “He is the only person in that category,” he told his counsel Michael McDowell SC.

He and Mr Lyons had dis-