Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will put it in context. Mr. Bergmann probably saw the earlier session of the committee. Under our Chairman this committee currently has a review going on in the Central Bank around tracker mortgages across virtually all the banking institutions in Ireland. Central Bank representatives will appear before this committee next week. The matter concerns the rates that customers were put onto when they were moved from variable rates to fixed rates. They should have been put on to ECB tracker rates. People were charged 3% and 4% above the tracker rate. I have a very pertinent question; if such an institution was allowed to set up and operate in Ireland, and if the fixed rate for example is 1.1% over ten years as in the German Sparkassen, at what rate would it be able to provide mortgages to customers in Ireland and be viable?