Relaunching the Irish Press newspaper titles would cost €20-30 million and such an investment is beyond the Irish Press Group's capacity, its chairman, Eamon de Valera, told shareholders yesterday.

At a heated annual general meeting yesterday, Dr de Valera faced an onslaught of questions from a handful of hostile shareholders. Dr de Valera was questioned repeatedly by a number of shareholders as to why the company had not paid off a €2 million loan owed to Independent News & Media.

"Why don't you pay off O'Reilly? Unless that happens, no one will buy these titles," said ordinary shareholder Michael O'Connor.

But Dr de Valera said it was a debt owed solely by the group's subsidiary, IPP. The Irish Press and Sunday Press closed in 1995.

"We would not be entitled to use group assets to pay the debt of a subsidiary for which the group was not liable if there is no value going to accrue back to the group," said Dr de Valera.

That was unlikely to happen as the company was not in a position to relaunch the titles and had not been in talks about selling them, said Dr de Valera.

Another shareholder, John Power, queried the structure of the accounts.

"The accounts are structured in line with modern accounting practice," said Dr de Valera. He said the value of the titles was set at a nominal value of £1,000.

He also defended the board's decision to dispense with the rotation policy for the re-election of directors.

"We were advised that it was inappropriate," he said.

A proposal by Mr Power that the directors' report should not be accepted was defeated.