Billy Kelleher: Customers are ‘taken for granted by banks’

A CORK politician has criticised Bank of Ireland 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 €1bn in the first half of this year — and called for greater reinvestment in its IT systems.

Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher said that Irish banks were taking their customers for granted.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the incident would “inflict lasting” reputational damage on the bank.

Mr Kelleher, a member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) 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.”