He ain't heavy . . . he's my mortgage

Would you describe your mortgage repayments as a heavy burden, somewhat of a burden, or no burden at all?

If your answer is "no burden", then congratulations, because, like a third of people who responded to a recent survey on attitudes to debt, your direct debits to your lender are clearly 100 per cent free-flowing without any "insufficient funds" hiccups or knock-on effects on the rest of your household budget.

If your answer is "somewhat of a burden", then you fit in with the majority of respondents - 53 per cent - to the IIB Bank/ESRI survey. Finally, if your answer is "a heavy burden" then you rank among 15 per cent of those surveyed. The chances are that you are a younger, more recent borrower and you are marginally more likely to live in the Dublin area.

Unsurprisingly, as the authors of the IIB/ESRI survey report notes: "It's not what you owe, it's what you earn that hurts."

Almost a third of people whose net monthly income was under €1,200 said their mortgage repayment was a heavy burden, compared to less than 10 per cent of those taking home €3,600 or more. Exactly how much constitutes a "heavy burden" anyway?

Only 6.1 per cent of borrowers were paying over €1,000 a month on their mortgage. The average repayment for those who had an outstanding mortgage was €500, with a Dublin average of over €100 more at €604.

But people who said their mortgage repayments were a heavy burden had a much higher average repayment, amounting to €714. In Dublin, the heavily burdened paid €857 on average every month. Those whose said their home loan was no burden to them had an average monthly repayment of €389. Moving into the bracket where they might be expected to find repayments a burden would require a substantial increase in interest rates, according to the survey report.

Nevertheless, at the burdened end of the spectrum, it is estimated that up to 80,000 borrowers on low or modest incomes will see their finances noticeably strained and feel a significant deterioration in living standards when interest rates rise to more "normal" levels off their current historic low.

But interest rates typically go up in quarter percentage point or half percentage point increments, so the speed of any future rate increases should be slow enough to prevent more widespread problems, according to Mr Austin Hughes, chief economist at IIB Bank. Borrowers will have time to adjust. Rates will go up either side of Christmas, he predicts.

It shouldn't actually be too surprising or alarming that so many people refer to their mortgage as a burden, Mr David Duffy, ESRI economist, believes. "It suggests that the rapid growth in residential mortgages in recent years is not being accompanied by complacency on behalf of the consumer," he says.

This may be of little comfort, however, to thousands of recent borrowers for whom every interest rate increase means that their mortgage burden gets at least a little bit heavier at a time when their net monthly income disappointingly stays the same.

These first-time buyers, yet to get used to the reality of large chunks of their earnings vanishing from their current accounts, can look forward to an average of 21 years' worth of monthly repayments before they are finally free and can genuinely call themselves "homeowners".