Tech outages leave services down at AIB and PTSB

AIB and Permanent TSB both experienced technical outages yesterday which meant that customers were unable to access their accounts.

AIB suffered a two-hour outage, during which customers were unable to access their accounts online or through the bank’s in-branch terminals. The outages resulted in large queues in branches across the country.

The PTSB outage only affected the bank’s online system briefly.

A spokesperson for PTSB confirmed that the bank had experienceda short outage but that the problems had been resolved.

“It has been fixed and everything is back to normal,” the spokesperson said. “The bank’s ATMs continued to function throughout the outage. Permanent TSB have apologised if any inconvenience was caused to customers.”

A spokesperson for AIB said that the bank’s system had been fixed about two hours after the problem was discovered.

“All systems are fully operational again,” the spokesperson said. “Any issues were resolved in about an hour.”

Under consumer protection legislation, the banks are required to inform the Central Bank of any issues that effect customers.

A spokesperson for the Central Bank said it was monitoring the situation to make sure that customers were not affected.

“The Central Bank is aware of issues with IT systems in AIB and Permanent TSB today which led to disruption to services for customers,” said a Central Bank spokesperson.

“We understand that issues have been resolved and we will monitor the situation to ensure that no customer is disadvantaged.

“The Central Bank expects all firms to have adequate systems and controls in place and where problems impacting customers arise they should be addressed and rectified urgently.”

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that a joint investigation by the Central Bank and the Irish Payments Services Organisation into last year’s Ulster Bank technical outage, which left customers stranded without access to their accounts for months, has been completed.

Recommendations from the investigation will be published before the summer.

A separate investigation by the Central Bank and the UK’s Financial Services Authority into Ulster Bank and its parent, Royal Bank of Scotland, is ongoing.