Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I did not realise I was the first one to indicate. I thank Mr. Felzen for his presentation. I apologise for the over-run earlier. I thank the credit union movement for the assistance it gave me when I was a Minister of State at the Department of Social Protection. Certainly a lot of initiatives we got off the ground would not have happened without the support of the credit union movement.

I will move to the euro and cent element of it. The banks appeared before the committee earlier. We spoke about loans to small and medium-sized businesses. We were looking at variable loan rates of 6.95% and fixed loan rates of 5.5%. They gave the German example, which involved a commercial bank with rates of between 2.5% to 2.8% for SMEs. Mr. Felzen has given examples of between 1% and 2%. I know the Sparkassen model differs from that of the commercial banks in Germany but can Mr. Felzen tell me whether there are any hidden costs relating to interest rates because we often need to compare like with like? Are there any fees relating to arrangement loans or charges for borrowing other than the interest rate percentages because it is always a comparison? When we talk about AIB and Bank of Ireland and compare interest rates on loans, they say there are many hidden costs relating to the European banks who charge arrangement loans and have hidden costs whereas Irish banks charge only interest rates on small loans.

Obviously, there are hidden charges on much higher loans. As a city-----