And that  BIS Review 66/2010  1  – in broad terms – is why bank lending rates have been creeping up again in Ireland. (I won’t speak today about important details such as the cross-subsidization between tracker mortgages and other lending.)
Given how intimately dependent bank lending rates are on the rates at which the government can borrow, let me say a word about the government’s borrowing costs and how those have been affected by market sentiment in recent weeks. Right across Europe, for the past several weeks, the fiscal pressures in the Greek economy have been heightening investor concerns.