MORTGAGES AND other debts totalling €197.3 billion left the Republic's households in the red last year, new figures show.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) published data yesterday showing that household debt in the Republic rose by €21 billion to €197.3 billion in 2007.

The CSO report shows that last year, householders borrowed almost twice what they invested and saved.

According to the office, householders' net borrowings were €21.2 billion, while "net asset acquisition" - that is savings, deposits, investments etc - came to just €10.7 billion.

This left households with a shortfall between borrowings and savings of €10.5 billion.

"Much of the borrowing is of course related to acquisitions of property or other non-financial assets, which are not measured in these statistics," the CSO report acknowledges.

"The trend of recent years of increasingly negative net financial transactions was reversed," it points out.

The CSO says the corresponding shortfall between savings and borrowings in 2006 was €15.3 billion.

The total value of household savings and investments was €311.8 billion against €197.3 billion in debts.

This means the net value of financial assets owned by households in the Republic fell 13 per cent in 2007 to €114.5 billion from €131.9 billion the previous year. This was the first decline since 2002, the CSO says.

The figures also show that the stock market turmoil which struck in the final months of last year also began to bite.

Insurance policies and pension funds accounted for 41 per cent of the €311.8 billion in assets at the end of 2007, compared with 43 per cent 12 months earlier. The CSO says this partly reflected last year's fall in share prices.