Allied Irish Banks, Ireland's second-biggest bank, has tripled its reliance on funding from central banks since the end of June as companies and customers pulled money amid the country's debt crisis. The bank's dependence on "monetary authorities" rose to 27 billion euros ($37 billion) from a "high single-digit" billion-euro amount on June 30, Alan Kelly, general manager of group corporate services at Allied Irish, said in a telephone interview today. Funding conditions were "increasingly challenging," the Dublin-based lender said in a statement. Irish lenders have become more reliant on European Central Bank funding after being frozen out of wholesale markets. The amount of ECB loans to the country's banks rose 7.3 percent to 130 billion euros in October from the previous month, Ireland's Central Bank said on Nov. 1. The data include both international and domestic banks operating in Ireland.