Bank of Ireland has said it needs to "strike the right balance" when it comes to passing on European Central Bank interest rate hikes to customers, and rewarding deposit holders.
Speaking at the bank's AGM in Dublin, CEO Myles O'Grady said it does not want to "push mortgage customers into affordability issues".
He described the lender's response to the ECB rate increases as "measured".
"To-date, in response to the ECB's 3.75% increase, while Irish tracker mortgage rates have contractually followed ECB moves, the group has increased fixed mortgage rates by between 1% and 1.5%, and has made no changes to variable mortgage rates," Mr O'Grady said in his opening address.
"Over the same period, we have also increased deposit rates for consumers and businesses several times, and recently launched a new savings account offering 1.5% for the first 12 months."
For reasons of competition law, Mr O'Grady said he was precluded from discussing any future rate changes the group might make.
"I trust that shareholders will appreciate that," he said.
Meanwhile, responding to a question from a shareholder, the bank said it will consider offering longer-term mortgages of more than ten years to customers.
It also addressed the issue of staff bonuses at the bank.
In November the Government announced that a number of restrictions related to remuneration were being lifted in respect of the bank. This included the blanket prohibition on variable pay and the pay cap.
Responding to a question on how bonuses would be reintroduced into the bank, Chairman Patrick Kennedy said he understands this is an "emotive" issue.
But he added that the role of the board is to attract and retain the right talent.
"We have to do that for colleagues, for customers, for society and for our shareholders.
"There are a number of strands to how we approach doing that. One is to have a market leading hybrid working model, another is to have very progressive people policies, which I think we now have, and third is to have competitive remuneration," he said.
"We do ensure that all our remuneration is benchmarked across alternatives, industry and financial and non-financial sectors. We do ensure that variable pay to the degree that it is introduced, and it has been introduced to a cap, is available and is offered to all colleagues in the organisation," Mr Kennedy added.
Back in March, Bank of Ireland's annual results beat expectations.
It reported €1.2 billion in underlying profit before tax for the year to the end of December as it grew its customer base by over 11%.
