Note 1:
Money and Banking statistics cover all credit institutions resident in Ireland. This includes licensed banks, building societies and, since January 2009, credit unions. A resident office means an office or branch of the reporting institution which is located in the Republic of Ireland. Data are reported in respect of resident office business only. Recent data are often provisional and may be subject to revision. For further detail, please see the Money and Banking webpage for:
Irish-headquartered banks refers to institutions whose ultimate parent entity is resident in Ireland.
Note 2:
A number of lenders have agreed payment breaks with their customers since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. These breaks are likely to significantly affect the Money and Banking lending data in this period, predominantly by keeping outstanding loan balances higher than they would be, had repayments followed their initial schedule. As well as this, end-quarter months’ data is affected by quarterly interest capitalisation, which increases balances in on-quarter months.
Note 3:
Convenience credit debt is defined as the credit granted at an interest rate of 0 per cent in the period between payment transaction(s) undertaken with the card during one billing cycle and the date at which debit balances from the specific billing cycle becomes due. Extended credit debt is defined as the credit granted after the due date(s) of the previous billing cycle(s) has/have passed, for which an interest rate is charged.
Note 4:
Treatment of securitised loans
As a result of an update to the ECB Regulation ‘on the statistical reporting of balance sheet items of credit institutions and of the monetary financial institutions sector (recast) (ECB/2021/2)’, there have been changes to how certain securitised loans are required to be classified for the purposes of statistical reporting. The below treatment, allowed under the previous Regulation, is no longer permitted under the updated Regulation:
‘MFIs (….) may be allowed by their NCB to exclude from the stocks (…) any loans disposed of by means of a securitisation in accordance with national practice (…)’
The removal of this clause means that banks are now required to report all previously excluded securitised balances within their on-balance sheet stocks of outstanding loans.
This has resulted in an increase in the on-balance sheet stock of house purchase loans in tables such as Table A.1 and Table A.4.
These securitised loans were already captured in Table A.6, which combined on-balance sheet and securitised loans since the series began in January 2003. This change does not impact on published transactions and growth rates for January 2022. As a result of this change, we will be discontinuing publication of confidential series within table A.6 in the future.
Note 5:
In March 2023 the outstanding amounts and transactions of domestic household deposits increased following the entry of a credit institution into the Irish market. Without this addition the household deposit growth in the year would have been lower still.
Statistical classification of sole proprietors
In line with their treatment in ESA 2010, the Central Bank is harmonising the treatment of sole proprietors by reporting agents across various datasets. This has resulted in a reclassification of loans and deposits from the NFC to the Household sector. These amendments have been made with respect to January 2022 reference data, with revisions to historical data to follow. Specifically, these changes mean an increase in loan and deposit balances reported against the household sector, and a decline in balances reported against the NFC sector. This change does not impact on published transactions and growth rates for January 2022.