Thousands of homeowners in Ireland who had their tracker mortgages taken off them by their bank are due to get a Christmas present by being restored to the lower rates.

Central Bank regulators ordered an industry-wide probe of a suspected 10,000 cases across all Irish banks where people lost trackers during the downturn. Now the first batch of 2,000 Ulster Bank customers are to be written to from next month telling them they are being put back on trackers - and that they are due refunds in the new year.

AIB is also restoring 3,300 customers to tracker rates, and is due to outline details to them in the coming weeks about refunds and compensation. Refunds of around €20,000 are set to be paid out by AIB, experts said. Compensation amounts of around €3,000 are likely in typical cases.

Bank of Ireland and KBC are also understood to be close to putting people who lost trackers back on the low rates.

Getting restored to a tracker rate will see repayments for those affected coming down by around €330 a month for a typical borrower as people on tracker rates pay on average €4,000 less a year on a €200,000 mortgage than those on a variable rates.