Interest rates on Savings Deposit Accounts in Ireland gradually fell lower and lower over the last few years. Many instant access deposit accounts were paying zero or a tiny 0.05% rate of interest in 2022.
On a deposit of €50,000 a rate of 0.05% would earn just €25 a year in interest – before tax.
The ECB started raising interest rates again in 2022 as inflation began to increase. Those ECB interest rate rises have continued in 2023 and are gradually resulting in higher interest rates for savers. The Irish banks weren’t in a big hurry to pass them on. (Despite massive increases in profits.)
If you have money sitting in a savings account paying just 0.1 % – you could get interest rates that are much bigger elsewhere.
Fixed Rates
Interest rates of up to 4.22% are available at Raisin.ie (fixed for as little as 1 year) .
On €50,000 – that rate of 4.2% would earn €2100 a year before tax . After tax, this would be €1407
By comparison – over five years – the 5 year National Savings certificate pays just 0.59% Tax-Free. (Interest of just €295 a year on €50,000)
Visit our page comparing the Best Deposit Interest Rates in Ireland
Instant Access
Check out the best instant access rates on our page of the Best Savings Rates in Ireland
Lightyear is an investment platform, not a bank , but it also pays interest on clients’ uninvested cash . The current rates are shown below. (Instant Access, no minimum deposit).
| Lightyear Interest Rates | |
|---|---|
| Currency | Interest Rate |
| Euro | 3.25% |
| GBP | 4.5% |
| USD | 4.5% |
If you are interested in investing some money in stocks and shares, look at our page comparing the fees of various online stockbrokers in Ireland.
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Investment Trusts and ETFs
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See more of our Money Saving Tips.
why are Irelands Bank savers being punished by the banks with the consent of the Irish Government. Surely Banks which charge phenomen interest rates to borrowers should be compelled to pass on all the hikes that have recently been imposed by the Central BNK back to savers. Finally why are savers so mealy mouthed about taking these greed merchants to task
@Ronald Mc Cartan: Well said! I’ve been quietly (out of self preservation from all powerful entities above the law) helping people exit the greedy, bloated, outdated and inefficient Irish banks as a form of protest against this nonsense. Sadly, this issue isn’t just an Irish issue, but EU wide. I’ve yet to find a regular bank in the EU that offers decent daily acruing interest on easy access deposits – nothing close to 2% even which is disgusting. Best I’ve found is investment firms that have free accounts like Lightyear (best rates I’ve seen so far actually matching ECB deposit rates with 0.75% coming off that as their fee – quite reasonable, but only 20000 eur protected) and Trade Republic (sadly stuck at 2%, but at least that’s on money up to 50000 eur). I think people are too complacent and afraid to pull their money out of these parasitic banks, possibly because there’s literally no competition offering anything of value and one has to go look outside of official and well known banks to find anything worthwhile and believe me, it’s not easy to find – I actually found both Lightyear and Trade Republic through this website. I would go so far as to say the banks are most certainly colluding with the governments to avoid paying back any portion of the interest they’re happily hoarding from those desperate to buy a home in the increasingly ridiculously over priced housing market or even just keep up with the continuously rising living costs.
It’s become clear to me that they’re still very happy for people to take out loans at exorbitant rates and treat those who diligently save and don’t spend beyond their means as second class citizens. The world runs on the over leveraged and broken credit system and this continues to feed the ever growing cost of assets. Clearly we live in a world where we’re losers if we try to save rather than spend money we don’t have till we die, unless you’re rich in which case you can simply live off the proceeds without breaking a sweat.
I’d like to say I’d be happy if everyone pulled all their money out of these extortionate banks all at once and have them shrivel up and die, but sadly that won’t ever happen because a. the governments will bail them out with our hard earned taxpayers money because they’re “essential” to the functioning of the financial system b. they’re bloated like ticks with from gorging themselves on the easy juicy ECB approved interest earned from their bloodsucking mortgages and loans that they literally won’t ever die and if they somehow miraculously get close to that, they’ll make damn sure to drag everyone else down with them.
Lightyear pays interest on any uninvested cash in EUR, GBP & USD Their current interest rates (as of June 19th, 2023) are 2.5% on Euro, 4.25% on USD, 3.75% on GBP.
https://www.moneyguideireland.com/lightyear-investment-platform.html