The UK based Nationwide Building Society is now offering savings accounts to Irish customers. Nationwide UK (Ireland) has opened for business in Dublin this week. Nationwide is the biggest Building Society in the world and is still a mutual company with no shareholders.  They have 14m customers and balances of over £200bn (c.€220bn).

Irish Savings Accounts Available: at the time of launch (March 2009)
Easy access: 2.75% variable -  Minimum Balance  €2000
Fixed 6 months : 3.02%, minimum €3000
Fixed 9 months: 3.11%, minimum  €3000

See our list of the Best Savings Rates to see the latest figures

Telephone : 1800 800 310 (9am to 5pm, Mon-Fri)

Office  Address

3 Spencer Dock
North Wall Quay
Dublin 1

Sort Code 90 – 24 – 77

Many companies in Ireland make use of the Lo call 1890 or 1850 numbers – but for most people  – making a call to one of  these numbers can cost more than ringing a “normal” landline number. If you are on a call package where you have free landline calls or a certain amount of free landline calls – these 1890 or 1850 numbers are not included in the free calls.
Calls from landlines to these 1890 or 1850 numbers will be costing you up to 5c a minute and from mobiles almost 50c a minute. If you are put on hold for 10 minutes it could end up costing you a fiver.
You should  try and find an alternative number to the 1890 number.  Companies should really list both numbers on their websites and in the phone book – but sadly they don’t always do that.

Both Ulster Bank and First Active have lowered the rates on most of their savings accounts .

The esavings plus account now pays a rate of  4% (Min 15k balance)

The esavings account pays 3%

All the best instant access rates in Ireland here.

It was to be expected with all the ECB cuts- Northern Rock have from today cut the rate on their Online instant access savings account from 4% to 3.25% .
See the up to date list of the Best Savings Accounts here.

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Visit Dell Ireland to see how much you could save this St Patricks weekend.

The ECB have announced another interest rate decrease today. The new rate will be just 1.5% – a reduction of 0.5%.  The ECB has now cut rates by 2.75 percentage points since early October.

The Bank of England also cut interest rates earlier today by a half point to 0.5 percent, the lowest since the bank was founded in 1694. The Bank of England has now reduced the key rate 4.5 percentage points since October.

An average price reduction of 10% on Electricity and  12% on Gas is on the way in  Ireland
The Irish CER (Commission for Energy Regulation) announced it’s proposal to get suppliers to drop fuel prices from  May 2009. The reduction has yet to be confirmed – but it applies to all suppliers including Bord Gais, ESB and Airtricity.

See our Electricity Price Comparison

Leeds Building Society in Ireland have introduced a new Euribor tracker mortgage. This mortgage will track the European inter-bank lending rate – which today is at 1.81%. This is lower than the ECB rate – but it is more likely to fluctuate as it is not set by a monthly meeting like the ECB rate.
The Leeds Building Society has two rates – the first is Euribor plus 3% (currently 4.81%) and is only available for LTVs under 50%. For LTVs of 50 to 70% the rate is Euribor plus  3.25% Max LTV for remortgage is 60%.

I can’t see too many borrowers rushing to switch to Leeds at the moment with variable rates as low as 3.25% at AIB and Halifax.

March 2009