Disruption goes on for Ulster Bank customers

Ulster Bank’s irate customers can expect to face another week of financial chaos as the bank said it could be next Monday before the technical problem is resolved.

A spokesperson for Ulster Bank said they would not be committing to any date for the technical issues to be resolved. The breakdown has now been resolved in the UK, but in Ireland, the future for Ulster Bank’s customers remains unclear. They have been without access to their own money for two weeks

“We are not committing to a date for resolving the issue. We will systematically update customers. It could take up until next Monday, but we are not committing to a date,” the spokesperson said.

The banks’ 1.9 million Irish customers have already endured two weeks of being locked out from their accounts while they try to get by on alternative arrangements. They are now facing a third week of trying to prove that they have money in their accounts at branches across the country.

Today 48,000 parents who are expecting to receive their child benefit payments will have to make their way to branches with identification and the bank will process the payment.

“Parents can claim their child benefit payment if they come to a branch with identification and we will process the payment,” a spokesperson said.

The bank said it won’t be until after a full investigation that they will be able to understand exactly what went wrong. The current problem for the bank is trying to establish which payments have been processed and which have not.

“An error caused the automated batch processing to fail on the night of Tuesday June 19. The knock-on effects created significant processing delays and required substantial manual interventions from our team. This was made worse because the team could not access the record of transactions that had been processed up to the point of failure.

“The need to first establish at what point processing had stopped delayed subsequent batches and created a backlog. It is not clear at this stage why that record was not available,” Ulster Bank said in a statement.

Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath said: “The scale of the problem at Ulster Bank was clearly larger than the bank was willing to acknowledge in the first instance and it has failed to get to grips with the problem.”

The chief executive of RBS Group, Stephen Hester, who was in Dublin yesterday apologised to Irish customers for the delay in resolving the problems in Ireland.

“I want to apologise to our Ulster Bank customers for the significant inconvenience caused by these technology problems.

“I recognise that being sorry is not enough; we believe we have fixed the initial problem and are now making inroads in catching up with the knock-on effects to our customers in Ulster Bank.

“My colleagues and I are fully committed in support of our board, management and staff in Ireland, who have been tireless in their efforts to support our customers,” he said.