Bank of Ireland have issued an apology after a glitch on Tuesday allowed customers to withdraw money they did not have in their accounts.
Customers were unable to access their online accounts or the Bank of Ireland app during the outage.
Reports of queues at ATMs across Ireland were reported on Tuesday evening, and Gardai were deployed following reports of “unusual activity at ATMs”.
Rumours spread on social media that €1,000 was appearing unsolicited in people’s accounts.
While banks typically set the amount that can be withdrawn at €500, many people were able to transfer at least twice that amount from their Bank of Ireland accounts into Revolut accounts.
They were then able to use their Revolut cards to withdraw money from Bank of Ireland ATMs.
The speed at which Gardai were deployed to deal with the issue has been called in question, with Socialist Party TD Mick Barry remarking “it was interesting to see how many Gardai were mobilised and at what speed when queues began to form at the ATMs.”
“Many communities that suffer from problems with anti-social behaviour will wish that they could get a response from the Gardai that is even half as speedy as that.”
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A statement from Bank of Ireland said “yesterday a technical issue impacted a number of Bank of Ireland’s services. Our teams restored these services overnight and all services are available to customers this morning. Overnight payments to accounts may appear throughout the day.”
“We are aware that the technical issue meant some customers were able to withdraw or transfer funds above their normal limits. These transfers and withdrawals will be applied to customers’ accounts today. We urge any customer who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to overdrawing on their account to contact us.”
“We sincerely apologise for the disruption this outage caused – we know we fell far below the standards our customers expect from us.”
The bank added that customers who withdrew money from their accounts while its online and app services were down will still be debited from their accounts.