Ireland’s minister for finance has called for a review of the circumstances around a technical glitch at the Bank of Ireland which allowed some customers to go beyond their normal withdrawal and transfer limits.

Some users of the bank's mobile app and 365Online service had noted a glitch that allowed customers with low balances to transfer up to €1,000 to a linked account with a digital banking app which in turn could be withdrawn via an ATM.

The news was first reported by local media in Ireland on Tuesday, with Irish police saying that they were aware of unusual volumes of activity at some ATMs in the country.

Finance minister Michael McGrath said that he has asked the Central Bank of Ireland to establish a full account of “what happened, why it happened and what will be done to avoid a repeat.”

“Given our growing dependence on technology for the delivery of financial services, I have asked my officials to engage with the Central Bank on its assessment of this Bank of Ireland incident, and more broadly the robustness of the technology systems used by regulated, customer-facing financial service providers here in Ireland, and whether any further steps are required to reduce the risk of outages that impact on customers,” said the government minister in a statement. “From my point of view as Minister for Finance, financial service providers have to do whatever is required to ensure continuity of service for their customers."

He continued: "This is vital for the normal functioning of our society and our economy. Disruption to banking services can have a significant effect on people’s personal lives and on the running of businesses. Customers rightly have an expectation of a high quality of service and to be able to have uninterrupted access to services.”

The country’s largest lender by assets initially tweeted about the issue on Tuesday evening, before following up later in the evening with a reminder for customers that “if transferring/withdrawing funds-including over normal limits-this money will be debited from their account.”

Bank of Ireland confirmed the issue had been resolved early on Wednesday morning, tweeting: “Following the outage yesterday, the App and 3650nline are back working again. Overnight payments to accounts may appear throughout the day. We sincerely apologise for the disruption this outage caused - we know it fell far below the standards our customers expect from us.”

A separate statement from the bank added: "We urge any customer who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to overdrawing on their account to contact us. We sincerely apologise for the disruption this outage caused."

Last month, Bank of Ireland reported a pre-tax profit of over €1 billion for the first half of 2023. This represented an increase of 192 per cent on the same period last year. Its retail division saw profit fall almost 30 per cent, due to more money being set aside to cover potentially bad loans.

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