Banks are ‘massaging’ lending figures

The banks are massaging their mortgage lending figures in an effort to meet their targets, according to members of the country’s leading brokers’ organisations.

Karl Deeter from Irish Mortgage Brokers said: “The banks are spoofers. We can see as brokers from the amount of mortgage application rejections that they are not lending. For example, Permanent TSB claims it is going to lend €350m this year. They don’t have the money to make that sort of lending.”

At the start of the year both AIB and Bank of Ireland announced they would make €2bn each available in new mortgage lending this year.