Mortgage lending increase helps push borrowings up by €700m

IRISH people borrowed an extra €700 million in February, mostly mortgages, to bring lending by credit institutions to non-Government Irish residents to €143.2 billion.

The Irish Central Bank yesterday released its monthly statistics on savings and borrowing to the end of February, which showed the rate of debt growth has slowed and savings increased by just €170m.

"For the first time since September 2002, the annual rate of credit growth slowed a little in February, with the adjusted growth rate of private-sector credit easing to 15.9% from 16.1% in January. Mortgage lending continued to accelerate, however, while growth in demand for credit from other sectors of the economy declined to 10.1% from 10.6% in the previous month," the bank said in a commentary on the figures.