Bank of Ireland glitch enabled customers to withdraw excess money from ATMs

Police said officers were sent to some ATMs

Bank of Ireland says it has resolved the technical issues that permitted some customers to withdraw or transfer funds exceeding their account balances.

Irish police (Gardaí) confirmed that they had responded to reports of public order disturbances at specific ATMs on Tuesday night, stating that officers had been sent to certain cashpoints.

Gardaí headquarters on Wednesday reported receiving over 40 calls from the public between 20:00 local time and midnight on Tuesday about an unusually high level of activity at various cash machines across the country.

Large queues formed at numerous cash machines after the news of the IT issue spread. In certain cases, Gardaí intervened to hinder individuals from accessing ATMs and dispersed the lines of people awaiting their turn.

The police said the choice to deploy units to ATMs was determined locally and evaluated on an individual basis, taking into account "public safety" and "public order."

According to local media reports, the IT glitch enabled customers to initiate transfers of up to €1,000 from their accounts, irrespective of available funds.

Although standard ATM withdrawals are typically capped at €500, numerous individuals managed to transfer at least double that amount between their Bank of Ireland accounts and their Revolut (digital banking app) accounts. Subsequently, they could use their Revolut cards to retrieve the funds from Bank of Ireland ATMs.

The bank said in a statement on Wednesday: "Yesterday a technical issue impacted a number of Bank of Ireland's services. Our teams restored these services overnight and all services are available to customers this morning."

The bank acknowledged that the technical problem enabled certain customers to surpass their usual withdrawal or transfer limits. Additionally, it stated that the number of transactions carried out on Tuesday night would not constitute "a significant proportion of our overall transactions volumes through an average day."

In a Twitter post on Tuesday evening, the Bank of Ireland cautioned: "We would like to remind customers if transferring/withdrawing funds-including over normal limits-this money will be debited from their account."

"We are conscious customers may not be able to check balances, but should not withdraw/transfer if they are likely to become overdrawn."

Bank of Ireland noted that the technical complications impacted customers in Northern Ireland as well. However, it clarified that there were no comparable reports of "customers using Northern Ireland ATMs late last night."

"We urge any customer who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to overdrawing on their account to contact us," the bank said.

"We sincerely apologize for the disruption this outage caused - we know we fell far below the standards our customers expect from us."

Irish Finance Minister Michael McGrath has requested the central bank to comprehensively document the sequence of events and ascertain whether additional measures are necessary to mitigate the potential for similar disruptions throughout the sector.

The central bank said it was closely monitoring the status of specific services offered by Bank of Ireland and actively collaborating with the bank to rectify any identified problems and discrepancies for customers.

It emphasised its commitment to do "all it can to ensure customers' expectation of a high quality, uninterrupted service is met".