Bank of Ireland warns money withdrawn during IT blunder will be debited as online services restored

This prompted huge queues at ATMs around the country last night, with people mistakenly believing they were getting free cash.

In some towns, the queues were so big that gardaí were deployed to control them.

Bank of Ireland said this morning that its mobile app and 365 Online had now been restored and it apologised to customers.

It said in a statement: “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 incident is a massive embarrassment for the bank.

The fault with the online app allowed people who had no money in their account to transfer up to €500 into a Revolut account.

Some people claimed they were able to get access to €1,000, but the bank insisted the daily withdrawal limit had been €500.

Once people use their Bank of Ireland app to transfer the funds to Revolut, they could then withdraw the cash from the Revoult account through any ATM.

Huge queues at ATMs in Dublin, Limerick, Dundalk and other parts of the country were reported yesterday evening as people took advantage of the screw-up to withdraw cash from their Revolut accounts.

There were reports in Dundalk of gardaí having to control crowds at ATMs in the town.

In a statement today, a Garda spokesperson said that decisions to deploy gardaí to ATMs were taken at a local level.

The spokesperson said: “On a case by case basis, local decisions were made depending on the public safety and public order presented to members of An Garda Síochána.

“An Garda Síochána remind people of their personal responsibility in carrying out their personal banking.”

The frenzied withdrawal of cash was despite warnings on social media that there was no such thing as free cash and the money would have to be repaid.

The glitch comes after bank reported half-year profits of more than €1bn last month.

Bank of Ireland insisted that any money taken from accounts where there were no funds would show up as a debit, and essentially be treated as an unauthorised overdraft.

In June, there was another IT outage at Bank of Ireland but it did not result in people getting access to funds they did not have in their accounts.

It is understood a probe will now be conducted into the latest IT blunder, with the Central Bank expected to be involved.

The bank said yesterday evening as the glitch became apparent: “We are working on a technical issue that is impacting a number of our services including our mobile app and 365 Online.

“We are working to fix this as quickly as possible and apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused.

“We would like to remind customers that if they transfer or withdraw funds – including over their normal limits – this money will be debited from their account. While we are conscious customers may not be able to check their balance at this time, they should not withdraw or transfer funds if they are likely to become overdrawn.”

It was the second time on a day that the bank issued a statement. Yesterday afternoon it apologised after it was hit with unexpected disruption to its mobile app and online services.

A spokesperson for the Central Bank said this morning: “The Central Bank continues to monitor the situation regarding the availability of certain services provided by Bank of Ireland. We are engaging with Bank of Ireland to ensure that any issues and errors identified are resolved for customers, and that it is doing all it can to ensure customers’ expectation of a high quality, uninterrupted service is met. Customers should contact Bank of Ireland in the first instance if they have concerns about their service. For more information, impacted customers should contact Bank of Ireland on 0818 214 365 or visit www.bankofireland.com.”