Sept 2006 - Sept 2009 Source: Irish Central Bank

The Irish central bank reported today that Irish residential mortgage lending fell again in September 2009 and total outstanding private sector credit (PSC) also declined. Gross new spending on personal credit cards was down 15% compared with a year before.

The bank said headline PSC dipped by 3.4 per cent in the year ending September 2009.

Most of this decline results from valuation effects, such as write-downs of loans and increased bad-debt provisions, and exchange rate effects as the euro has strengthened in recent months.

The Central Bank said aside from these valuation effects, the underlying stock of credit was marginally lower on a year-to-year basis in September. The annual growth rate of non-mortgage credit declined again in September to 0.4 per cent.

Outstanding indebtedness on personal credit cards increased slightly during the month, but remains unchanged on a year-to-year basis.

September was only the second month so far in 2009 where new spending on personal cards exceeded repayments on these cards. However, the bank said gross new spending on personal credit cards continues to decline on an annual basis, being 14.8 per cent lower compared with September 2008. This is consistent with other measures of consumer spending, such as the Retail Sales Index.

Residential mortgages (including securitised mortgages), which account for approximately 85 per cent of household lending from Irish resident credit institutions, declined by €14 million during September. The stock of mortgages outstanding at end-September came to €147.9 billion. The annual rate of change in mortgage lending is now down to just 0.3 per cent.

Sept 2006 - Sept 2009 Source: Irish Central Bank