Ireland

Some 300,000 people with standard variable rate (SVR) home loans look set to benefit from reduced monthly mortgage payments from July, the Irish Times reported. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan met this week with the country’s main six lenders – AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank, KBC and ACC – to discuss “the comparatively high standard variable rates currently being charged by the banks”. Mr Noonan said there was agreement from all lenders that customers should have access to more competitively priced mortgages.

A High Court judge has permitted the family of businessman Seán Quinn to proceed with claims in their forthcoming legal action that some €2.34 billion loans by Anglo Irish Bank to various Quinn companies were made for the unlawful purpose of propping up the bank’s share price, the Irish Times reported. However, the Quinns cannot continue to pursue those aspects of their claim alleging the loans are unenforceable, Mr Justice Robert Haughton ruled.

Liquidating one of the Irish banks was “not an option” on the night of the bank guarantee in September 29th 2008, the former Central Bank of Ireland governor John Hurley told the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry Thursday. “I would not have advised any government to take that risk,” Mr Hurley said, adding that other options were discussed, including nationalisation. “You were not going to take such a risk with the economy.” In evidence given to the inquiry in January, the current governor Patrick Honohan, said Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide should have been liquidated by the State.

Members of businessman Sean Quinn’s family have been refused permission by the High Court to make a crucial amendment to their case aimed at avoiding liability for €2.34 billion loans made to Quinn companies by the former Anglo Irish Bank, the Irish Times reported.

Assets at the Dublin banking arm of Bank of America Merrill Lynch plunged in 2014, as the bank’s retrenchment in Ireland continued and headcount shrunk by a third. The bank, which was once Ireland’s largest bank by asset size, according to The Irish Times’ business database, Top1000.ie, has now slipped back to 14th in a ranking of Ireland’s largest financial institutions.

Most of the €7.4m proceeds of sale of businessman Sir Anthony O’Reilly’s home in Co Kildare have gone towards paying off his €22.6m debt to AIB, the Commercial Court has heard, the Irish Times reported. The bank now wants to ask him in court about other means he has of paying off the remainder. The bulk of the proceeds of the sale of Castlemartin has gone towards reducing the businessman’s personal debt to AIB to around €14.3 million, the court heard.

The family of businessman Sean Quinn say they are “innocent parties” to €2.34 billion loan transactions involving Quinn group companies and therefore should be allowed amend their claim for their pending action denying liability for those loans, the Irish Times reported. The family want to amend their claim in light of a recent Supreme Court decision on a key preliminuary issue in their case.

New laws later this year are set to stop banks from being able to stop mortgage holders from entering an insolvency arrangement, the Irish Examiner reported. The Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, has given the clearest hint yet that a new authority will be set up to remove the veto from banks. The move follows complaints from opposition TDs that banks have been using their veto to stop mortgage customers from entering an insolvency process to escape some of their debts. Noonan told the Dáil that the Government now accepts the system needs reform, and that it will be changed soon.

A group campaigning for the reduction of variable mortgage rates will call for a legal cap on the amount banks can charge borrowers at a meeting in Dublin on Thursday evening, the Irish Times reported. The SVR Campaign, led by consumer advocate Brendan Burgess, is hoping to get Irish based banks to reduce their mortgage rates. One of the suggestions to be proposed as a way of achieving this is for the government to apply a cap of 3 per cent on the amount banks can charge standard variable rate (SVR) customers.

Ireland has re-emerged as one of Europe’s top performers but high debt levels continue to pose an “uncertainty”, according to the European Commission. The commission forecast economic activity here would remain “resilient” in 2015 and 2106 with domestic demand taking over from exports as the main driver of growth. In its Spring statement, the Commission revised downwards slightly its growth forecast for Ireland for next year, predicting growth of 3.5 per cent next year compared to 3.6 per cent forecast four months ago.