Ireland now has the fifth highest mortgage interest rates in the Eurozone after a slight increase was recorded in January, new data from the Central Bank of Ireland shows.
This is despite interest rates falling to an average of 3.82%, the lowest they have been in Ireland since April 2023.
Newstalk’s Business Editor Joe Lynam told Newstalk Breakfast that there have since been two rate cuts in February and in March which will have brought rates down even further.
“They’re down to two and a half per cent... so 3.3% [average rates] should be down to,” he said.
“That makes us the fifth most expensive in the Eurozone behind Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovakia.
“The average interest rate in the Eurozone – this is as of January now, according to the Central Bank – is 3.36%.”
Man with many bills or invoices and no money. Alamy 2024While this puts Irish mortgage interest rates only around a half point higher than the European average, Joe said we were “way above the average three years ago”.
“The banks will tell you when you ask them that they were very slow to pass on the interest rate hikes when they happened in ‘22 and early ‘23,” he said.
“So, they don’t have as much to come back, they will say.
“The total value of new mortgage agreements, according to the Central Bank, stood at €677 million, up 25% from the same period in 2024.”
Joe said that is a “huge spike” in the value of total mortgages.
Main image: Signing a home mortgage agreement, a woman signs a mortgage agreement, a close-up. Image: Evgeny Dmitriev / Alamy. 4 July 2021
