Irish banks' reliance on emergency funding fell to its lowest level in more than two years in November with outstanding loans of €116 billion.
This is down from €119 billion a month earlier, new Central Bank figures show today.
The figures show that banks had €75.7 billion in outstanding loans from the European Central Bank at the end of November, down from €78.2 billion in October.
Emergency loans from the Central Bank were unchanged at €40.7 billion.
The country's banks are heavily dependent on loans from the ECB and the Central Bank to run their day-to-day operations. Under the country's EU/IMF bailout they must shrink their balance sheets to ease that exposure, which peaked at €187 billion in February 2011.
Other figures from the Central Bank today show that the amount of total credit to households stood at €96.9 billion at the end of September - a quarterly decline of 0.7% and an annual fall of 3.4%.
The Central Bank said that the annual rate of change in loans for mortgages was down 1.9% for the three months to the end of September - the 11th quarterly decline in a row. This brings the outstanding amount of mortgages to €79.4 billion.
The total amount of deposits held by Irish households was €87.2 billion at the end of September - a quarterly increase of 0.4% and an annual rise of 0.8%.
The Central Bank noted that the net flow of personal deposits was €689m - a ''significant improvement'' on this time last year when the net flow of personal deposits was minus €4.5 billion.
