Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are all bombarded by emails and letters. Stuff comes in. One looks at it and 3% or 4% does not sound like a substantial difference. Going from 4% to 3% is a 25% difference for people who are reasonably numerate, but not everybody with a mortgage is obsessing. They have families, perhaps older parents or young children, are in busy workplaces and so on. When I was going to college, there was significant pressure from whichever bank happened to be located on campus. It wanted to recruit everyone. As a certain bank manager said to me a long time ago, a person was more likely to change her husband or his wife than her or or his bank account. That level of inertia stemmed from it being too much trouble to change a bank account, similar to a mortgage. On average, the figure is about €1,400, but it could be €4,500 or €5,000 for some of the people concerned because the loan is almost but not at 90% and the value might be much more than €80,000.