The Central Bank's latest 'Economic Letter' offers a detailed insight into Ireland's mortgage market in 2016.

A total of 29,893 mortgage loans worth €5.7bn were drawn down during the 12 months.

According to the data, the average age of a 'first-time buyer' (FTB) was 34 and the average amount that they borrowed was €185,939 with an average property price of €250,361 and average income of €67,287.

Over one-third of these purchases were in Dublin.

When you remove FTB's the average drawdown was €217,602 - and the average property price was €390,933.

FTB's borrowed an average of 2.9 times their salaries and took mortgages worth 78.8% of the value of the property.

This Economic Letter provides an overview of residential mortgage lending in Ireland in 2016 for the five credit institutions reporting loan-level data to the Central Bank of Ireland as part of their compliance with loan-to-value (LTV) and loan-to-income (LTI) macroprudential regulations.

"The vast majority of lending was for PDH purchases with limited buy-to-let activity," the report states.