Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will move on to other issues. I am sure we will revisit this collectively and individually in the time ahead.

I want to challenge Mr. Hayes on something he said. I expect that he will accept that the banks were slow in that their pass through rate in respect of deposits are way lower than the European average, which means that people who have money on savings are not getting the reward compared with European banks. He made the point in his opening statement that Irish banks passed through the second lowest increase in mortgage interest rates between May 2022 and July 2023. I just want to tease that out with him. He rightly said that the interest rate on all outstanding mortgages is 3.4% for banks at this point in time. I think Eurostat gives the figure as 3.45%, to go to the second percentage point, but the Eurostat data bank also show that in May 2022 that rate was 2.47%. Does Mr. Hayes accept that those figures are where we are at? On outstanding Irish mortgages, the average interest rate increased from May last year to July of this year from 2.47% to 3.45%, which is a 0.98% increase. Does Mr. Hayes accept that is a fact?