Banking Expert Peter Mathews on fixing Ireland's Banking Crisis

I’m writing this post from somewhere on the Irish Sea between Dublin and Holyhead.

For fear of doing a Declan Ganley on it, I won’t say it’s my last. But as I said to the taxi driver this morning as he dropped me to the ferry terminal, I’m looking forward to not thinking about NAMA for a while. Unfortunately, I’m not expecting a limo to be waiting for me when I arrive.

I met Peter Mathews for the first time just this day four weeks ago, as the country went to the polls to vote on Lisbon. We had been invited to participate in a panel of experts on our objections to NAMA. It’s funny how such chance encounters can change your plans. Peter has been very generous with his time and helped me get up the learning curve on the technicalities of our banking crisis. My head now understood what my gut was telling me. And in what might best be described as a Quixotic exercise, I did what I could to help Peter get his message out there.

I interviewed him on the 6th and got a segment online on the 7th, and followed it with the full interview broken into five parts. A week later he was on Vincent Browne, the week after that he was on Frontline, Newstalk, and RTE’s Drivetime, and this week he participated in Leviathan and appeared on TodayFM. Thankfully, Peter’s persistence has paid off. The decision to take the risk of putting on the RDS event (which didn’t break even) came on the back of seeing Peter on Vincent Browne. He was more than well able for Goodebody’s and has since taken on Mike Soden, Mary Wilson, Dan Boyle and Frank Fahey. And I’ve yet to hear anyone credibly challenge his analysis. There’s no shortage of those willing to try on the ad hominem argument, but that merely highlights the strength of his analysis. And his growing profile is testament to this. Despite the circus, their are still those who are willing to be told the emperor has no clothes. And should the ill-fated HMS NAMA leave the port, as it inevitably appears, his analysis is on the record and in the public sphere so that our politicians and often forgetful voters can be reminded in future elections. A case could be made for catching up with Frank Fahey in five years, as he requested, and  subjecting him to the Ludovico technique using Peter’s video or this one if NAMA is not ‘working wonderfully’ as we all hope.

I was struck by a comment of the first questioner at the RDS event last week, when he prefaced his question by saying that one of the unintended consequences of NAMA and the ensuing economic malaise will be the return of the brain-drain, as our brightest and best vote with their feet and leave. Modesty precludes me from suggesting I’m among them but I am on a ferry going the other way.

This post will hopefully not be misconstrued as a vanity affair. I would like to record for posterity how this website came to be. I would also like it on record something Peter said in Leviathan – he is only going public in the manner he is reluctantly, but after six months of knocking incessantly on Minister Lenihan’s door he felt compelled to try other routes such is his conviction that NAMA will be a disaster for the country. It remains to be seen how Peter’s peers will view his breaking rank. He has ploughed a brave and disappointingly lonely furrow. While we have seen much to disappoint us about ourselves over the past year, and probably longer in the run-up to this unholy mess, Peter’s stand follows in the footsteps of a long and distinguished line of Irish patriots.

Mathews Abú!