Borrowers urged to grab low f ixed rates – while they can
Irish interest rates have remained remarkably low in the face of the worst onslaught of rate hikes in history. But that won’t last long, brokers have warned, and they are urging borrowers to lock into rock-bottom fixed rates while they still can.
The European Central Bank has hiked rates by 2% – which would double the lowest rates around. Yet, incredibly, fixed deals can still be snapped up at around 2%.
It’s no coincidence that Bank of Ireland and PTSB are the only two lenders not to act on rates – they are the dearest variable-rate lenders after all. AIB – close to being the cheapest – has moved to up its fixed rates.
But, overall, Irish lenders haven’t moved and have improved their ranking among eurozone lenders from the worst of the lot to about 12th-worst.
Brokers Ireland said Ireland is now just 0.18% above the euro area average. Rachel McGovern, the lobby group’s director of financial services, advised borrowers to review their mortgage rate urgently.
‘There are still very good rates in the market and serious savings to be made,’ she said, although ‘conditions attached to lending, such as stress tests, are tightening’.
Fancy some cheap family entertainment en route to today’s Extra.ie FAI cup final between Shelbourne and Derry City? The Irish Sports Museum is marking the day by charging just €1 in to an exhibition of shirts worn in various FAI cup finals over the past 35 years. You can see the display between 11am and 2pm at St Andrew’s Resource Centre on Pearse Street – a 10-minute walk from the Aviva Stadium on Lansdowne Road.
Programmes and other collectibles will be on sale at the fair, including hundreds of vintage and modern football shirts from Ireland and around the world in all sizes, from child to adult.
‘It will be well worth a drop-in on the way to game, or even for any football supporter or player not attending the game to spend a couple of hours at what is always a
great day out,’ said a museum spokesman.
■ British media is getting worked up over ‘highly paid’ civil servants after it emerged that 500 of them are getting more than £100,000 a year in their health service. Are they having a laugh? We had 4,000 civil servants earning €150,000 or more at the last count.
That is the equivalent of £130,000 or more – in a country 14 times smaller than Britain in terms of population. In the health service, a recent report into 68 people earning more than €300k in the HSE revealed that one consultant pocketed €758,000.
And as if that weren’t enough, we rewarded judges, hospital consultants and higher-paid mandarins in the civil service with a 10%-15% pay hike this summer. Average public sector pay here runs at around 22% higher than private sector wages and enjoys an even bigger premium over UK public sector wages.
If there was ever a united Ireland, the cost of equalising public sector pay would be enormous, though it should equally incentivise the large proportion of Northerners in that sector, though few seem to take this into account.