Week 4 of Ulster Bank crisis; bank vague on exact number of customers still impacted

Posted July 16th, 2012 in Dáil Work, Finance

Fine Gael TD for Wicklow, Simon Harris, has today (Monday) described Ulster Bank’s latest statement where it claims that the issue has been resolved but makes no mention of exactly how many customers continue to suffer from lack of service as farcical.

“This entire mess has been very badly managed by Ulster Bank. This morning’s statement and subsequent media interviews by its CEO Jim Browne, shows the total lack of leadership from senior management of the bank. Using words like the ‘majority’ of services have been impacted and that there are ‘some’ legacy issues still ongoing is completely unacceptable at this stage.

“It is now four weeks since this issue occurred and I strongly believe that the bank’s customers deserve some facts and figures relating to this mess. Of the 600,000 customers impacted, how many are still suffering from the bank’s incompetence? How many legacy issues remain unresolved? And can the bank at least give us a definite timeline as to when we can expect full services to be restored? Over the past four weeks we have been told over and over that the issue will be resolved in a couple of days. Twenty-eight days later we are still being told the same story.

“I was also astounded to hear Mr. Browne being interviewed earlier today where he admitted that he did not know if reports which stated that the IT team in Edinburgh responsible for this issue had been reduced by half. This is in spite of the fact that the Chair of the Oireachtas Finance Committee asking him this exact same question at the Finance Committee two weeks ago.

“Senior management has shown a total lack of leadership and must stop hiding away in their offices, using costly ads and issuing vague statements. They must engage with their customers and be up front and honest about exactly how many customers are still being impacted and when the legacy issues will be resolved.”