. there was also a development towards a more decentralised and individualised wage formation, which has had a subduing effect on wages. many agreements gave the local social partners the freedom to determine and distribute the wage scope themselves. however, the local negotiating scope was often limited to some extent by block rules regarding the size of this scope and guarantees for a minimum wage increase for each individual. the 1998 bargaining rounds marked a break in trend with regard to the rate of wage increase. the annual nominal rate fell from approximately 8 per cent during the period 1970 - 1997 to around 3. 5 per cent during the period 1998 - 2000. the outcome may be regarded as moderate taking into account the rapid recovery in the economy and the large increase in employment that took place during the period covered by the agreement. the fact that there were unused resources also helped to keep down the rate of wage increase. low inflation meant that real wages increased considerably. during a 20 - year period up to the mid - 1990s, real wages rose by an average of only 0. 5 per cent a year, but over the past five years the average increase in real wages has been approximately 3 per cent a year. the development towards a more decentralised wage formation process continued in the 2001 bargaining rounds. all those in the central government sector have local wage formation, compared with around one - fifth in the private sector. some of the agreements signed were completely without figures so that everything was determined at local level, without any individual guarantees or centrallyestablished levels. this applies to one - third of the employees in the public sector and 7 per cent of those in the private sector. prior to the 2001 bargaining rounds, the unions in lo decided to improve the wage situation for women in the public sector in relation to industrial workers. however, the wage bargaining between the employers and the swedish municipal workers'union broke down and after mediation the social partners reached a central agreement that entailed wage increases of around 3. 7 per cent a year during the period 2001 - 2003, with the possibility of local agreements on higher wage increases. the municipal workers'union agreement was thus one of the most advantageous among the lo unions. this time, nurses and teachers were the first onto the field with regard to wage bargaining and they signed 5 - year agreements, which roused some concern that high wage agreements stemming from the favourable demand situation would spread to the rest of the labour market. the average level of the wage agreements in the economy

pursued tracker mortgage issues with a number of individual lenders and ensured 7, 100 cases were resolved in favour of affected customers. we also took enforcement action against springboard mortgages limited, resulting in a reprimand and monetary penalty of €4. 5 million, the highest penalty ever collected by the central bank further to an enforcement investigation. a full history of these interventions can be found in part ii of our march 2017 update on the tracker mortgage examination, which is available together with all previous updates on the examination here : www. centralbank. ie / consumer - hub / tracker - mortgage - examination 1 an outline of the central bank ’ s policy and supervisory interventions and enforcement activity in relation to tracker mortgage - related issues in the pre - examination period is contained in the annex to this statement. 2 26, 600 affected customers identified through the examination and 7, 100 cases remedied following central bank intervention outside of the examination 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches