Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Last year, €76 million of that €188 million was for mortgage accounts and the other was broken down between the other headings. The bank is now expecting a higher level of write-back. In layman’s English, the bank overprovided for bad debts on those mortgage accounts for €76 million in 2014 and will have a higher figure for 2015. Essentially, it will be €150 million that the bank has presumed it might not get back. I know the bank changed the factors regarding house prices from their drop from the peak. There is a minimum of €150 million of overprovision for mortgage losses in the bank’s figures for 2014 and 2015. Variable interest rate mortgage holders pay for this overprovision. The bank has been excessively hard on the variable mortgage rate holders with that level of overprovision. It has overstated how bad these accounts were and has penalised them accordingly.