Fianna Fáil renews call on Europe’s costliest home mortgages

Fianna Fáil, which is helping to prop up the minority Coalition, has pledged its controversial sponsored bill to persuade the Central Bank to place some sort of cap on variable mortgage rates will be renewed when the Oireachtas returns from its summer break.

It comes as another Central Bank bulletin again showed that the average Irish cost of a home loan at 3.3% was much higher than the eurozone average of just over 1.8%.

Official surveys have repeatedly shown Irish households and small businesses are charged among the highest interest rates in Europe, even as rock-bottom ECB rates are designed to boost the eurozone economy following the continent’s devastating debt crisis.