AIB: It is true that people are borrowing more than ever - the Central Bank figures don't lie - but they are also saving more than ever. There has been a boom in investment trusts, unit trusts, equities, Government bonds - Irish people seem to be stashing it away like never before. So if people are borrowing more they also have more assets than ever. Remember, in a low interest rate environment, people might choose to borrow to buy, for example, a car, even though they have money to buy it.

Bank of Ireland: We have a prudent outlook. There's no point in lending to someone if they can't pay it back - it's not good business. Also, we have a social responsibility not to allow people over-borrow. We take a snapshot of each borrower's current financial situation, including not just income but all loans, and we carry out stress-testing, to see how he or she would cope with, for example, a rate rise of 2 percentage points.

Irish Life & Permanent: The key statistic in our business is loan-to-value ratios - in other words the proportion of their value of the house that people borrow in a mortgage. Our research shows that this is consistently below 75 per cent. By comparison, in the British crash, the figure in many cases was 100, which meant that even with a slight decrease in property prices, people were into negative equity.

EBS: There are certain inescapable facts about how the market has gone. From mid-1995 to now, house prices have increased by 130 per cent. Incomes, even allowing for drops of interest rates and tax, have not increased by that amount. So therefore, people must be taking on a higher level of debt. The pressure on some young people to buy a house is such that they are tempted to take on debt they can barely afford, and perhaps supplement that with other debt. We are in a climate of increasing interest rates, and inevitably there will be problems for some individuals.

First Active: People are not overborrowed in general. Loan-to-value ratios are still very acceptable. Also, when we grant home loans, we stress-test to make sure that people can still make their repayments. In 1993, the average family was paying 36 per cent of a single income in mortgage payments; now, the average family is paying 36 per cent of two incomes combined. But their disposable income has risen too.