New AIB chief executive Colin Hunt has signalled the lender cannot rule out further sales of soured loans following a farmers’ protest at its annual meeting.

Bank of Ireland has said a "technical error" is to blame for incorrect information about their customers being posted on the Central Credit Register.

Consumer and financial experts have called on regulators to probe the grip held by AIB and Bank of Ireland on the banking market. The calls come after ECB head Mario Draghi told the Oireachtas Finance Committee on Thursday that a “quasi-monopoly” was driving up the costs of credit for homes and business borrowers.

The rates will be 1% less than what's currently on offer, and will be available to both new holders and mortgage switchers.

Irish banks still have some way to go to match the low levels of mortgages in the rest of the eurozone after KBC Bank followed Ulster Bank in reducing its fixed-rate home loans, according to campaigner Brendan Burgess.

The numbers that will be affected by home repossessions “could fill Croke Park” because of the intransigence of banks and the “cancer” of vulture funds, a mortgage campaigner has claimed.

The sale of mortgage loan books and the "cancer" of vulture funds means Ireland is walking blindfolded into a massive social crisis, a mortgage campaigner has said.

Mortgage campaigner David Hall is hoping to replicate the buy-and-rent back deal he has done with AIB with the State’s other major homeloan providers.

A leading mortgage advocate has said the rules restricting lending are not punishing first-time buyers and that the Central Bank should not change them significantly.

Two years ago, when we launched the Fair Mortgage Rates Campaign, Irish borrowers were paying 4.5% compared to an average Eurozone rate of 2.64% — a difference of 1.86%.

Irish homeowners continue to pay the highest costs in Europe for their loans, while savers here get some of the worst rates, according to official figures.

The interest rate charged to an Irish borrower wishing to take out a new mortgage or to switch mortgage is the highest in the eurozone. The rate is not just a bit higher, it is way higher. The average rate for new business is 3.7% in Ireland compared with 2% across the eurozone.

New Central Bank figures showing falls in the average costs of mortgage rates have done little to silence calls for more aggressive cuts in home loan rates to eurozone levels.

Fianna Fáil last night pledged to reintroduce a bill in the Dáil “at the first opportunity” that it says will swiftly lead to Irish banks slashing their home loan rates.

The countdown to politicians forcing cuts in costly mortgage rates quickened yesterday as Fianna Fáil pledged to reintroduce a bill in the Dáil that it says will swiftly pave the way for lenders to slash home loan rates.

Mounting political pressure on mortgage lenders to cut their standard variable rates could impact funding costs at Permanent TSB more than many other banks, a leading banking analyst has said.

Permanent TSB has seen a rise in new mortgage applications since the turn of the year, saying its well-documented home loan overcharging scandal has not damaged its business.

A campaign group aiming to propel the high costs of mortgage rates up the election agenda was launched yesterday. It immediately won the broad support of two of the main opposition parties.

The high costs of Irish mortgage loans look set to loom large in the election as a campaign group yesterday won the support of leading Opposition politicians to cap the costs of mortgages here.

With a general election approaching, the Government can take satisfaction that many of the issues that arose after the crash have been addressed. The economy is growing again and the public finances and banking system have been stabilised.

Senior opposition politicians said the failures at Permanent TSB that led to mortgage customers losing their homes and saw financial hardship inflicted on many others has once again put the spotlight on soft controls over the banking industry here.

One of the leading global credit rating agencies has given a broad endorsement to plans that could see courts given the power to limit the rates banks charge standard variable rate mortgage customers.

The Central Bank said it won’t say whether it will use special powers to investigate any of Ireland’s main banks that survived the crash only with the help of bailouts.

Most of the mortgage lenders have now announced rate cuts in response to their meeting with the finance minister.

AIB has reiterated to shareholders that it is actively considering cutting the rate of interest it charges mortgage customers.

Mortgage insurance will drive up prices, provide minimal protection to borrowers and do little to improve the supply of houses as it is “the wrong medicine for the job”, a group of industry experts said yesterday.

A TSUNAMI is about to hit the courts.

Even though AIB is still loss-making, it hopes to make a pre-provision profit in 2014, its chairman David Hodgkinson told shareholders at yesterday’s AGM.

The financial regulator is hanging up his boots come October. Kyran Fitzgerald casts a cold eye over his performance and achievements in the role, which he has occupied since Jan 2010, and the list of likely successors

Gardaí, teachers and even doctors are turning to the State budgeting service MABS for help as they struggle to pay energy bills.

THE National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has defended its plans to introduce a deferred payment scheme which would insure buyers of NAMA-controlled property against the threat of negative equity for a five-year period.

IRISH Nationwide Building Society, currently in the process of transferring over €8.7bn in bad loans to NAMA, could need further Government funding to shore up its depleted capital base.

IRISH Nationwide Building Society (INBS) members yesterday voted to accept Government funding of up to €2 billion at a special general meeting.

A chartered accountant who qualified in 2002 and is employed in the industrial and commercial sector earns an average remuneration package of €110,500 a year, according to the Annual Salary Survey of the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants/The Accountants Panel.

AS Standard Life debuted on the London stock market yesterday the prospects of an Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) flotation in Dublin moved a step closer.

A chartered accountant who qualified in 2000 and is employed in the industrial and commercial sector earns an average remuneration package of €81,600 a year, according to the Annual Salary Survey of the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants ( LSCA)/The Accountants Panel.

IRISH Nationwide Building Society chief executive Michael Fingleton was paid €1.32 million last year.

A TYPICAL Irish chartered accountant earns €71,000 a year but the salary range goes from €24,000 to €480,000, according to the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants (LSCA).

CAMPAIGNERS for demutualisation of the Irish Nationwide Building Society were yesterday celebrating victory in forcing the society to convert to a bank by the year of the end.

MEMBERS of the Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) last night voted to begin the process of demutualisation immediately and instigate sale of the institution as soon as legislation to clear any deal is published.

FOR the 300 members of the Irish Nationwide who turned up at the building society’s annual general meeting yesterday many of them must have wondered if they were in the proper venue.

DEMUTUALISATION campaigners at the Irish Nationwide are opposed to staff being given a large chunk of the proceeds of any sale of the building society.

MEMBERS of the Irish Nationwide Building Society will vote on whether the society should demutualise at its annual general meeting in April.