‘Leading expert’ on banking crisis leaves Fine Gael

He was lauded as a “leading expert” on the financial crisis by Fine Gael when it announced Peter Mathews would be running in the 2011 general election.

But the man who made his name as a pinstriped banking expert and panel stalwart on TV3’s Vincent Browne show, proved to be more trouble to the party than he was worth.

Briefly a member of the Progressive Democrats at the time of the its foundation, he joined Fine Gael weeks before it was announced in Jan 2011 that he would be put on the party’s ticket.

He ran in Dublin South and got 9,053 first preference votes — almost the same as his Fine Gael running mate Olivia Mitchell and almost 2,000 more votes than now Justice Minister Alan Shatter, who was in the same constituency.

He was hardly in office when Fine Gael lost interest in the advice of the “leading expert”.

He caused the first headache for his party in April 2011 when a spokesman for Michael Noonan, the finance minister, had to dismiss his claims that the banks would need another €20bn on top of the €24bn being injected by the Government.

A month later, he spoke independently of his party by saying that Ireland was being “financially bullied” by its European partners and continued to argue for a different approach to promissory note payments.

He raised eyebrows for different reasons at a parliamentary party meeting early in 2012 when he whipped out his rosary beads on the suggestion of one TD, as a joke, that they say a decade of the rosary.

In Mar 2012, he proposed a motion at the finance committee which the Government lost despite its big majority.

He became one of the strongest opponents of the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act, and apologised for saying “sure we’re all going to end up dead anyway” when discussing risks during pregnancy.

Mr Mathews eventually lost the party whip over the issue and became involved in a bitter row when the party attempted to remove him from his office.

He is part of the Reform Alliance group, along with other Fine Gael TDs and senators who lost the whip over the abortion issue.

After resigning from Fine Gael yesterday, he said he would stay in politics and “put myself forward” in the next general election, but declined to say if he would run as an independent or join another party.