Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, the banks themselves would say that they have bad loan books, which is a drag on the market and that has to be compensated by charging interest rates on mortgages which would be higher than the European average. Second, they would say that they wrote a substantial number of tracker mortgages which are either are unprofitable or certainly were two years ago. Maybe as we moves towards negative interest rates, the tracker mortgages may be showing slight profitability. The banks will show figures that, taking the totality of their mortgage books, they are not profitable because the drag of the bad loans and the drag of the trackers. It is one of the reasons they give for having variable mortgage interest rates higher than what would be the norm across Europe. We all know they went bust, that they had to be rescued by the State and that they are working their way through the bad books. That is the argument. The Central Bank would agree with that analysis but it is not for me to speak for the Central Bank, and the committee will have it in here.