Glitch gives ATM users ‘free money’

THERE were long queues outside Bank of Ireland ATM machines across Dublin last evening after a technical glitch meant bank machines appeared to be handing out “free money”.

The queues grew rapidly by late last night due to messaging on Twitter and Facebook.

However, Bank of Ireland last night explained it “wasn’t free money” but a consequence of their technical glitch which meant they and their customers were frozen out of their bank accounts.

Bank of Ireland management made a decision to allow all customers to take out a nominal amount of cash from their accounts yesterday, rather than leave them without any access to funds.

However, it soon emerged that people with nothing in their accounts could also withdraw cash.

“The fact that money could be accessed on zero balances was exploited by a minority of people, ably helped by Twitter and Facebook and soon it led to queues at many ATMs as the rumour mill went into overdrive. All money withdrawn from empty accounts will however have to be paid back,” said spokeswoman, Mary Brennan.

More than a million Bank of Ireland customers are facing a second day of being frozen out of their accounts after the unspecified “computer glitch”.

In a move that ironically occurred on the same day as €6 billion of budget cuts were announced, customers were informed they could not access all of their savings.

Officials at Bank of Ireland were told by the firm’s IT partner Hewlett Packard at about 10am yesterday that an unspecified “computer glitch” had damaged the mainframe for the bank’s 250 branches in the Republic, 22 in the North and all hole-in-the-wall access points.

Restrictions were placed on all accounts with the amount of withdrawals capped depending on the customer’s previous track record.

This meant that while people with long-term positive histories with the bank could still access their money in the small hundreds of euro, new customers or groups such as students were heavily restricted.

The situation was almost entirely focused on customers either side of the border, with just a small number of people in Britain being affected.

A spokesperson for the financial institution was able to clarify that the de-facto freeze on bank accounts was not related to a greater problem within the bank.

However, she could not immediately clarify how the glitch occurred, whether direct debits affected by the situation would be honoured, or when the bank’s IT difficulties would be fixed.

In a statement, the spokesperson said officials were working to resolve the situation as soon as possible.

“All branches are open and operating as normal but with a temporary restricted cash service.”

While major computer system glitches in the banking sector are rare, Bank of Ireland has suffered from at least two of these faults in the past five years.

In April 2005 there were problems with its online service and in September 2009 customers were double-charged for laser transactions.