A new housing study has found that couples buying a house for the first time are spending almost one third of their monthly income on mortgage repayments.
The Affordability Index, compiled by EBS Building Society and DKM Economic Consultants, found Dublin buyers spend at least 32% of their income on mortgage repayments, an increase of three percentage points since last year.
Spending across the rest of the country averaged out at 27%.
In a separate development, the Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal, Noel Ahern, has announced funding of more than €1 billion for local authority housing programmes.
The allocation for the provision of local authority housing now stands at €942 million.
Mr Ahern said he expected that more than 5,000 housing units should be completed by local authorities this year.
The increase in allocation of over €100m provides for work in progress on over 7,600 housing units and for authorities to construct or acquire 6,000 houses this year.
It also provides for the scheme of extensions to local authority housing to relieve overcrowding.
€46m being provided for the Remedial Works Schemes will enable refurbishment work to continue to dwellings in some 80 local authority estates throughout the country and allow for the designation of some new projects for funding.
€45m is available for the provision of Traveller accommodation.
