Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to move on to the mortgage rates. I took a look back at October 2012 when we had this conversation at the finance committee. AIB's rate was 3.5% and it has gone up to €4.15%, so it has gone up by 65 basis points. At the same time, the ECB rate has come down by 70 basis points. I appreciate it is only 3% of the funding but, at the same time, risk has obviously fallen dramatically for a variety of reasons, including the significant increase in house values, operating costs are down, provisioning requirements are down and, I imagine, there will be a significant rewind this year. I think it was Bank of Ireland that had a €280 million release of provisioning, so I presume AIB will also have a reduction in provisioning. Obviously, with quantitative easing happening, the direct cost from the ECB at only 3% is minimal in terms of leverage but wholesale funding is falling across the eurozone. Therefore, if all of the drivers of cost bar one seem to have fallen significantly at the same time that the variable rate has increased significantly, is it reasonable to conclude that the sole driver of the increase in the variable rate is to drive shareholder funding?