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Danske Bank in Northern Ireland made a pre-tax profit of £16.7m in the first three months of 2022, up 6% on the same period last year.

The bank said mortgage lending remained strong, up 25% compared to the first quarter of 2021.

That suggests momentum in the housing market continued at the start of this year.

In 2021. almost 30,000 homes were sold in Northern Ireland, the highest since 2006 when there were 41,000 sales.

The bank said that almost 90% of new mortgage lending was on fixed interest rates.

Danske said that lending to small and medium businesses had recovered strongly, up 36% year-on-year when government-backed bounce back loans are excluded.

However, it said that lending to bigger businesses remained subdued with many of those firms holding large amounts of cash.

The bank said it was monitoring the impact of the rising cost of living, but so far that does not appear to be having a significant affect on customers ability to repay loans.

In the first quarter, the bank made a loan loss provision of just £2m - that is money that has to be set aside to cover loans which look unlikely to be repaid.