RTE News has learned that Bank of Ireland is to pay back €1.8m to customers it wrongly charged. Government duty charges were wrongly applied to 50,000 accounts after they were incorrectly designated as Irish resident accounts.
The charges were applied to customer accounts over a 15-year period ending in 2005. The bank said it identified the problem early last year during an internal review, and had spent the past year trawling through account details to ensure it had identified all the accounts that were affected.
A spokeswoman said the bank had put procedures in place to ensure it did not happen again. Bank of Ireland is writing to customers to explain the situation and will be issuing refunds in the coming days.
The sum of money returned to affected account holders will be adjusted for inflation and the average refund will be around €40.
