ANOTHER hike in interest rates, the third in six months, is a virtual certainty when the European Central Bank meets in Madrid on 8 June.

Predictably, mortgage providers are advising customers to lock into today's rates while they still can. But with fixed rates nudging upwards by the day, you will have to search hard to find value.

IIB Homeloans has its eye on the World Cup, which kicks off in Germany the day after the ECB meeting. People who sign up for its threeyear fixed mortgage before the action begins on 9 June can avail of a special rate of 4.49%.

This looks attractive compared to Permanent TSB, which raised fixed rates across the board last Monday. It now charges 4.69% fixed for three years or 4.99% fixed for five.

This is a hefty premium for the peace of mind of knowing exactly what your repayments will be for the next few years. Permanent TSB's standard variable rate stands at 3.85%, and a half-percent move by the ECB, very much a worst case scenario, would push it to about 4.35%.

This is still fractionally less than Permanent TSB's new two-year fixed rate and substantially less than the cost of fixing for a longer term. So home owners would have to be pessimistic about interest rates to justify locking into what's on offer.

National Irish Bank still leads the pack with 3.8% fixed for two years, 3.95% fixed for three and 4.2% fixed for five.

But rates this low might not be around for long.

SAVE

NEW deposit accounts from Irish Nationwide and National Irish Bank will appeal to savers who like to be able to eyeball the people looking after their money.

They know the best rates tend to be offered by the growing crop of online and postal deposits. But nothing beats the security of keeping your money at a bank branch down the street.

Nationwide's new Advantage 30 account pays up to 3.25% interest with 30 days' notice required for withdrawals. But savers must have at least 100,000 on deposit to get the top rate.

The minimum deposit, a hefty 20,000, gets only 2.85% interest.

The new account entitles savers to membership of Nationwide, opening the possibility of a windfall gain when the building society is sold, probably some time next year.

The catch is that you will have to be a member for at least two years to qualify for a windfall. So if you open an account now, you have probably missed the boat.

NIB's ECB Tracker account looks like a much better bet. It pays 3.3% interest on deposits of 5,000- 20,000 and 3.5% on bigger amounts up to 50,000. These rates are guaranteed to shadow the ECB base rate of interest until the end of 2008 and savers can withdraw their cash at any time without notice. The only catch is that savers must open their accounts before the end of August and no more lodgements can be made after that date.

ONE TO WATCH

BUY-TO-LET investors should be keeping a close eye on the storm clouds that are now gathering over the state provision of rent supplements.

Many landlords depend on social welfare tenants because they stay for longer than other tenants, ensuring that properties are occupied for longer, and the bulk of their rent is underwritten by the state.

But the rising cost of rent supplement . . . the bill to the Exchequer jumped from 151m in 2000 to 369m last year . . . has focused political attention on the government's failure to build enough public authority houses to keep up with demand.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte lashed out at fatcat landlords in the Dail last week, accusing them of milking the system.

"This is a pot of gold for the landlords, " he said. "In very many cases it provides a bounty worth tens of millions to those who are already the beneficiaries of tax breaks to build the apartments that they now rent out."

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern pledged that rent supplement would revert to a short-term stop gap rather than a longterm solution to the housing crisis. But with housing lists getting longer by the week, it is not clear how this will be achieved.