Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not judging the bank's progress. I never mentioned anything about February or March. I am saying that what Ulster Bank did with regard to customers, which it robbed, was pathetic. It took this money from their accounts illegally. It took this money from them. We have AIB telling us that it has 500 people working on this. Whatever the 200 people in Ulster Bank who were working on this in January were doing, the first port of call is to pay back these individuals. Ulster Bank's great achievement in January was to give 197 customers back their money. When did Ulster Bank first find out that these individuals were impacted by it? It is a beautiful word - a nice industry word. These people were robbed by the bank because it told us in December 2016 that it was aware that 2,000 people were impacted, or robbed, by the bank. It is not the case that Ulster Bank only found this out a couple of weeks ago and now has to do all the calculations and all the rest. As the bank knew from December 2016 that these customers were impacted, how are members supposed to accept that a bank regulated here by the Irish State is in such disarray that it cannot return money it wrongly possesses in its accounts to its customers at least a year and one month after knowing and admitting it wrongly held that money? Is that not the case? Ulster Bank knew for more that a year and one month that 2,000 customers had their money wrongly taken from them by the bank. As of today, the bank has not given back their money to 800 of them.