Irish households - drop in loans and deposits

At the end of November Irish households had credit liabilities of €110.2 billion and deposits of €91.3 billion. There was a decline of 4.1% in loans since November 2010. Lending for house purchase was 2.5% lower while lending for consumption was 8% lower.

Some 78% of this credit (€80.3 billion) was in respect of loans for house purchase while consumer loans outstanding amounted to €16.6 billion and other undefined categories of loans to Irish households amounted to €13.2 billion.

There has been an overall reduction of €27.3 billion in credit advanced to households and almost all of this reduction is in the ‘loans for house purchase category. Some €15.4 billion of this credit was securitised. There are approximately 786,000 mortgages outstanding.

The total amount of deposits held by Irish households stood at €91.3 billion at the end of December 2011, a drop of €2.6 billion in the previous twelve months.

The currency in circulation in Ireland at the end of 2011 amounted to €12.4 billion, €755 million more than a year earlier. At the end of 2005 the value of the currency in circulation was €6.1 billion. The total money supply at the end of 2011 was €206.8 billion compared to €157 billion at the end of 2005.

The profile of the currency in circulation comprises 60,000 €500 notes; 25,000 €200 notes; two million €100 notes; 174 million €50 notes; 114 million €20 notes; €50 million €10 notes and approximately sixty million €5 notes. There are approximately 176 million coins with a value of around €14 million in circulation.

There are 2,137,000 credit cards in issue in Ireland which carried an outstanding credit balance of €2,78 billion. This is equivalent to an average amount due on each credit card of €1,305. Approximately 35% of the amount outstanding is paid by the end of the month so a significant portion of this debt is bearing very severe interest rates. There were 91,000 few credit cards in issue than at the end of 2010.

New spending on credit cards in December 2011, at €967 million, outstripped cumulative credit card payments by €45 million. During December 2010 new spending on credit cards outstripped payments that month by €24 million – so, while there are fewer credit cards now in issue there was a greater reliance on them to fund Christmas spending.

The outstanding level of borrowing from the Eurosystem by Irish resident credit providers was €108.4 billion at the end of December and €72 billion of this is owing by the domestic retail banks. This means that the Eurosystem is providing 72% of Ireland's private sector credit.