Companies whose customers paid their bills through the Home Payments service have promised to deal sympathetically with customers after the company went into liquidation. Home Payments owes more than €6m to 2,300 customers.
It is more than a week since Home Payments ceased trading, leaving its customers in the dark about money they had given the company to pay bills and save.
At the time, the National Consumer Agency said people were unlikely to see their savings again.
But its chief executive Anne Fitzgerald said the agency would try to ensure people did not pay on the double.
Earlier this week she met a number of regulators of the companies whose customers paid their bills through Home Payments. They have agreed to deal with these people sympathetically, and have encouraged affected customers to contact them.
The NCA understands that all bills up to the end of July have been paid. The agency says it is important that customers do not allow themselves to come under pressure to pay any one provider.
But it is not clear if people will have to pay bills after that date even if they had already given Home Payments to money to settle them.
The liquidator is due to issue a statement of affairs to all Home Payments customers advising them of their current status. The agency is advising people not to use unregulated bill pay services. It says that similar services are available from fifty credit unions in Dublin and from some banks.
The NCA is advising anyone in difficulty to contact the Money and Budgeting Advice Service.
