New Central Bank figures show that for the first time in over two years the level of private sector deposits is growing on an year-on-year basis.
In July deposits were falling at an annual rate of 0.8% but last month deposits increased by 0.7% compared to August 2011.
Private sector deposits from outside Ireland grew by €712m during the month.
Even though banks appear to be slowly repairing their balance sheets this seems to be happening at the expense of any new lending.
The Central Bank statistics show lending to households fell by half a billion euro last month on top of a €471m drop in July.
Home loans fell by €151m and other household loans dropped by €72m.
Repaying debt rather than borrowing money continues to be the order of the day. In the past month alone mortgage repayments outstripped new lending by €71m. Repayments on other household debt were €224m higher than the level of new borrowing.
The figures also show the Irish owned banks AIB, Bank of Ireland, EBS, Permanent TSB and IBRC borrowed a total of €101.6 billion from the European Central Bank and the Central Bank of Ireland.
Of that total €60.8 billion was in the form of monetary policy operations and the bulk of the balance was in emergency liquidity assistance.
The figures indicate use of emergency liquidity assitance has dropped by approximately €15 billion between August of 2011 and last month.
