Savers have been urged to move their money out of accounts that are “paying a pittance” in interest. 

Bonkers.ie spokesperson Darragh Cassidy said Irish households keep a “huge amount” of money saved up and potentially as much as €153 billion is kept on deposit.

“These are accounts where you have quick, easy access to the money and the problem is these pay very little interest and in some cases they pay a negligible amount of interest,” he told Lunchtime Live.

“What I’m trying to do is to encourage people, particularly over Christmas, to just look at better accounts for their money.

“Collectively, even though Irish people are beginning to move their money a little bit more to these better yielding accounts, a lot of Irish people aren’t and they’re keeping their money, for various reasons, in these accounts that are paying a pittance.”

If people moved their money to higher interest accounts, Irish people could collectively earn an additional €3.5bn in interest payments.

“It’s not as if everyone in the country has €20, €30 or €40,000 [in savings] but we’re not doing quite as bad as we think,” Mr Cassidy said.

“A lot of savings were built up during COVID, now they are beginning to be run down a little bit because of the cost of living crisis.

“But there will be a lot of listeners who will have 10, 20 grand that they’ve saved up, that’s lying there and they’re really doing nothing with.

“They’re not looking after it.”

Shop around

Higher interest accounts require you to lock your money away - but the length of time varies from bank to bank.

“With AIB, it could be two years. With Permanent TSB, it could be 18 months,” Mr Cassidy  said.

“In general though, it’s anywhere from one year to five years. So, it does depend.”

While some might think this inconvenient, Mr Cassidy said it does pay off.

“We shop around for our car insurance, why wouldn’t we shop around for our savings?” he said.

Main image: Euro bank notes.