The most recently published figures indicate that private-sector credit increased year-on-year by about 16 per cent compared with annual rates in the region of 30 per cent in early-2006. It is expected that this downward trend will continue into 2009.
However, an important distinguishing feature of the Irish economy has been that Irish households do not appear to have consumed their capital gains on housing to any great extent and, accordingly, their consumption does not appear as reliant on credit as is the case in many other countries which have experienced relatively large cumulative increases in house prices.