We touched on this topic over on MyHome.ie last Friday in our weekly blog contribution to their site.
It is important to look at this from a few perspectives
1. Regulation and the role of the Regulator 2. Past decisions by the Regulator 3. Politics and policy
1. Regulation and the role of the Regulator: The idea of regulation is not for price control, rather it is about prudential control. As galling as it seems to everybody, the Financial Regulator is not (nor should they be) empowered to tell banks what prices they can charge. This is sickening given that we have spent €10,000,000,000 this year alone via the NPRF in supporting our banks (€8.8bn to AIB and €1.2bn to Bank of Ireland).
Readers, if you know of other jurisdictions where regulators set prices please let us know! The idea of a Regulator is that you pay for them …