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(Alliance News) - Politicians have criticised Bank of Ireland Group PLC after its online banking services crashed on Tuesday, leading to people withdrawing or transferring more money than they had in their accounts.
Elected representatives have also drawn attention to "massive" profits being made by Bank of Ireland – more than one billion euro in the first half of this year – and called for greater reinvestment in its IT systems.
Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has asked Bank of Ireland and the central bank to look into the issue, and the bank has sincerely apologised to its customers for the outage, caused by a technical issue.
Fianna Fail MEP Billy Kelleher said that Irish banks were taking its customers for granted, while Sinn Fein's finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the incident would "inflict lasting" reputational damage on the bank.
Doherty also asked questions about why gardai were deployed to ATM's as people queued up to try and withdraw sums above what they had in their bank accounts.
"This is the latest in a series of IT failures at Bank of Ireland that have impacted its customers," he said.
"Citizens and businesses are reliant on the proper functioning of technology systems to deliver financial services.
"What is required is a full investigation into what has taken place, and a wider review of the IT systems that our banking sector operates, and which our communities and businesses rely on.
"Other questions need to be answered – including whether Bank of Ireland made contact with An Garda Siochana to deploy resources to local ATMs, and if there was any awareness at government level over these deployments.
He added: "Sinn Fein, citizens and customers will rightly ask why these exceptional profits are not being invested in areas that improve customer services.
"This is a bank that this government allows to reduce the corporation tax it pays to nil by carrying forward historic losses.
"These types of IT failures have become a regular occurrence – it is not acceptable.
"This latest debacle, which will inflict lasting reputational damage on Bank of Ireland, raises serious questions over its investment in its own systems and customer service at a time when its profit margins have soared."
Kelleher, a member of the Economic & Monetary Affairs Committee, said it was "not acceptable" that customers could not access their accounts on Tuesday.
He called for an investigation into the "debacle" and said the central bank needed to "up its game and start actively protecting Irish consumers in this sort of climate".
He also said that it illustrated a failure of Irish banks to invest properly in ICT, or information and communications technology.
"What is abundantly clear is that Irish banks have not invested in ICT and customer focused IT solutions.
"For example, we are still without instant transfers between Irish bank accounts meaning Irish customers must rely on non-Irish banking services such as Revolut.
"Our banks are making massive profits. While I have called for a windfall tax on these profits, the banks should also be heavily investing in their customer service systems to catch up with the services being provided by non-Irish banks.
"The Irish banking sector is taking Irish customers for granted.
"They have a near monopoly with little or no hope of another big, high street bank moving into the Irish market."
source: PA
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