Ulster Bank may still introduce fees

Ulster Bank may introduce fees before the end of the summer despite the ongoing payments fiasco and a petition to urge them not to retain free banking as a form of compensation.

Labour senator Lorraine Higgins presented a petition to Ulster Bank signed by 100 politicians across parties urging them not to reintroduce fees as a form of compensation to the customer hit in the crisis.

Ms Higgins said that among the hundreds of people affected by the banks payment outage, was at least one member of the Oireachtas whose Sky subscription was cancelled when a direct debit from the individuals Ulster Bank account was not paid.

Sky Ireland refused to comment when questioned on the number of Irish customers who have lost their service due to the Ulster Bank outage.

A spokesperson for Ulster Bank said the bank expected to be fully functional again on Monday and that meeting this deadline was its focus.

“The majority of our systems are now showing account balances as of today. However, some items, such as cheques, manual lodgements and some payments have yet to be processed and therefore will not be reflected in account balances.

“We expect that services should begin to return to normal from Monday 16 July,” the spokesperson said,