The Central Bank said today that Irish private-sector credit (PSC)/bank lending continued to fall in June, declining by €1.4 billion, following May’s €1.6 billion decline. As in recent months, this was mostly due to write-downs of loans with the underlying amount of credit outstanding remaining relatively unchanged. The annual rate of change in PSC turned negative in June, to minus 0.7 per cent. This is the first annual decrease recorded since the Central Bank began analysing PSC on the current basis. Residential mortgage lending outstanding declined by €62 million in June - - the third consecutive month of decline. The increase from a year earlier was down to 1.9 per cent in June, the lowest on record.