It makes sense that borrowing to buy property can be a bit of a roller coaster for the nerves.

With the help of a mortgage, you can suddenly have something substantial (a house or an apartment) in your possession that effectively does not belong to you.

And no matter how many pairs of curtains you put up, or how many times you look at your name on the deeds, it will not fully be yours until you have paid off the bank or building society. This means that paying off the mortgage will be one of the most thrilling events in the average person's lifetime.

The corollary of this of course is that having a mortgage can be a bit of a worry. This has become especially true over the past few years as house prices have soared and growth in lending for property purchases has shot into the stratosphere. Might we have borrowed too much?

Annual growth in borrowing for houses and apartments approached 30 per cent around the middle of last year, prompting worries from responsible bodies such as the Central Bank which questioned the basis for all those mortgages. The Bank, as befits its role in the economy, was worried about what would happen if interest rates climbed unexpectedly or rapidly.

Nearly a year on, it's a case of so far, so good. The latest figures from the Central Bank suggest that growth in borrowing has peaked over the past couple of months, with the annual rise now closer to 25 than 30 per cent.

This is comforting news for anybody who was feeling a bit perturbed about the sustainability of the Irish property market, particularly since the drop in year-on-year growth is backed by an easing in house-price inflation.

The big thing that remains in the dark background however is the potential for interest rates to rise and make our mortgages harder to pay back. Most economists, including the head of the European Central Bank, have ruled out the idea that the main euro-zone interest rate (the one that governs mortgages) could fall from its current 2 per cent rate any time soon. In fact, many if not most believe that a rise in rates could come before the end of the year, possibly bringing us up to 2.25 per cent. Further rises would then be on the cards.

This leads us to ask how well we can afford our mortgages at the moment and how well we will be able to support them in a rising (albeit slowly) rate environment. Economists take varying views on this, but few are in a state of panic on the issue.

Among the experts to most recently offer an opinion on the matter were AIB's economists, who reckon that housing affordability will remain reasonably stable this year. For 2006, they say that there will probably be a "moderate deterioration" in affordability as interest rates increase, but they do not expect this to reach worrying levels as disposable income continues to grow strongly and economy-wide inflation remains low.

Furthermore, they point out, affordability problems can be eased by taking out mortgages over longer terms. "This more than compensates for any deterioration in the affordability trend and, in general, repayment affordability would appear to be relatively comfortable," they say.

Reassured? If not, try to calm yourself by checking out the AIB research on www.johnbeggs.com. Repossession would appear to be some distance away.