The Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said today that all the indications are that the European Central Bank will lower interest rates next week.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said the banks will pass on this change to tracker mortgage customers"more or less immediately, and we would expect banks then to reprice their products accordingly"."I think the key driver of their future decisions will be the data around inflation, and it's not for me, as Minister for Finance, to give advice or to comment on decisions beyond next week," Minister McGrath said.
The Minister for Finance said that slowing inflation is"a good thing, because that is what allows the ECB to make the decision to begin to cut interest rates,". "We're now at a point where inflation is back down at around 2%, but price levels remain high and a lot of people still are feeling the pressure," he said.
"I do think you need to get back to a more normal approach to budgeting, and in that regard helping people means I think the emphasis should be on permanent supports and permanent measures whereby you recognise what the purchasing power is of incomes now, relative to what it was before we had the spiral of inflation kicking off in 2021," he stated.
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