Interest on savings

There is a basic misunderstanding here. The purpose of a central bank in this respect is to regulate and ensure the smooth operation of the market not to act as somewhere the banks can dump all the cash they can find and earn interest on it. Yes, they can borrow and deposit money with the ECB, but the business model requires them to actually function as a bank.

Apart from ECB linked mortgages the ECB rate does not make a heap of a difference to the financial products the banks sell including savings accounts. So in order for the banks to offer you a higher rate of interest, they need to be able to find safe opportunities to invest those deposits, in other words demand for business borrowing needs to rise and that is not happening at present.

It is also worth remembering that the rate of return is always associated with the amount of risk you take on. In banking circles Ireland and Germany are seen as two of the safest European economies you can invest in so the interest rates are low, where as the UK is borderline investment grade and you’d expect to receive a higher rate of return.

I would not expect to see Irish deposit rates rise significantly until we start to come out of the recession and business starts to pick up.

You’d also take on significant risk in doing so. I keep failing to hammer this principle into peoples heads - nobody is going to give you a higher rate of return than they need to because they think you are a nice guy, they do it because you are taking on significant risk beyond the norm. It does not matter what the product is nor who it is dressed up a higher rate of return always represents a higher risk.

AIB UK wouldn't open a STG£ deposit account with an Irish address when asked recently.

They mentioned Brexit as a reason at the time.