Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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What happened on 24 April when payments were not made? I am not referring to the occasion on which money disappeared from people's accounts but to that - it was a couple of weeks later - when payments were not made. Did the bank's systems think it was a bank holiday? Will our guests explain that matter?

If I am correct, the day the Deputy is referring to is 1 May. By way of understanding, 1 May is a bank holiday across Europe, or at least in most countries across Europe. Since the Single Euro Payments Area was brought into place in 2013 or 2014, any payments have to go via the European Banking Authority, EBA. For example if I was to transfer money from bank A to bank B, from Galway to Limerick or from Mayo to somewhere else in the country, the payment would go to the clearing system and come back in. That is the way it operates. The European clearing system was not operating that day. Any inter-bank payments were delayed by a day - direct debits, mortgages, etc.

I believe the Deputy is referring to the fact that on that day there was a problem on one of our specific channels. It did not arise on all of our payment systems, to be clear. There was a problem on the mobile app that day, which arose if an Ulster Bank customer made a payment transfer between Ulster Bank accounts on that app - not a mortgage transfer, but a transfer from one account to the other. The app was behaving in the same way for intra-Ulster Bank transfers as it was for inter-bank transfers, if that makes sense. Clearly, that should not happen. It should not behave that way. That issue arose specifically on 1 May, specifically on the mobile app. All the other channels, including branches, Internet banking and telephony, were all behaving in the way one would expect.