That's excellent advice FC for those in that position. It's a pity that the ruling relies on specific wording, since it is objectively reasonable that everyone on a variable rate is entitled to expect that rate to be varied not arbitrarily but in relation to the cost of wholesale borrowing needed to fund their type of loan.
As it is, the individual legal route, even if it is upheld, will only apply to those who can uncover the specific wordings, can afford the risk of costs in the most eye-wateringly expensive courts system in Europe (or was it the world?), are sufficiently informed, and have the stomach for a fight. In a more open and liberal regime, no doubt mortgage holders would have recourse to the powerful weapon of a class action, but if I am right our courts don't allow such a solution. That surely would be too radical an enfranchisement to be tolerated by our ultra-conservative and extraordinarily cosseted banking and legal establishment.
What is needed here is simply what was missing when the banking crisis occurred in the first place, and that is effective regulation in the interests of consumers and of wider society, with an appropriate response to the gouging of those trapped in SVR mortgages. The Central Bank has attempted to wash its hands of the problem, and we are left with sporadic media interest and some ineffectual venting from an exiled Government MEP aimed at Government-owned and/or rescued banks.
Just the other day, KBC's chief economist was blithely blaming the lack of consumer confidence and flat retail figures on the continued austerity imposed through the USC, pension levies and so forth. I am sure many KBC SVR customers would have a lot more money for patriotic consumption in the economy if they were not paying this arbitrary tithe to support his and other bankers' salaries. Needless to say, no one in our lazy, lazy media has called him on that.