The Banking Inquiry's been told that the cabinet should have known better than to include Anglo and Irish Nationwide in the bank guarantee.

Professor Gregory Connor says ministers should have known the banks were insolvent - and taken more time to let them collapse.

That's despite the poor information given by regulators, who he says spent too much time promoting investment and not enough time regulating.

Professor Connor says the cabinet should have known better, if it had only been more "thoughtful".

"A thoughtful cabinet meeting at that stage should have been able to see, at that stage, that Anglo - at least - and Irish Nationwide were insolvent. Even with the poor information provided by the Financial Regulator," Professor Connor of Maynooth University said.

"Maybe the information provided was so bad that they missed that, but that is my opinion."

Professor Connor said he suspected the decision was made based on political convenience rather than a financial basis.

"I suspect they thought, What's politically in our interest? I suspect that played a role, which obviously it shouldn't in such a high-stakes, expensive decision," he said.

He added that it was now obvious - and illustrated through the Anglo Tapes - that senior bankers knew their institutions were insolvent at the time of the guarantee, but did not raise their concerns.

Our political correspondent Gavan Reilly filed this report for Today FM's National Lunchtime News: