Mortgage costs ‘won’t necessarily fall in crisis’

The costly loans for business and home mortgage borrowers won’t automatically fall despite an anticipated sharp fall in demand for new lending during the Covid-19 crisis, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland, Francesca McDonagh has said.

The remarks come as the country’s largest lender by assets (which is 14% owned by the State) posted a loss of €235m in the first quarter even as the Covid-19 economic crisis had only started to bite and the number of jobs hit by the crisis raced to almost 1.3m.