Lorraine Higgins (Labour)

I welcome the national stimulus package announced by the Government today. Towns in east Galway, particularly Gort and Tuam, have benefitted significantly from the allocation of primary care centres, with many other towns also benefitting from the N17 and N18 motorway project now going ahead.

I welcome Ulster Bank's proposal to compensate customers for inconvenience caused during the recent IT glitch, as I called for such action from the very start of this debacle. However, despite numerous assurances from the bank, the problem persists, and it will be a number of weeks before the matter can be fully resolved.

We have all been made aware of certain issues regarding inaccurate recordings of customer accounts, I have now been informed that some direct debits in Ulster Bank customer accounts have been changed without the customer's permission from monthly to bimonthly, resulting in duplicate payments. When one affected customer contacted Ulster Bank, the institution wrongly tried to blame the originator, and the bank cannot and will not explain how a change was made to a direct debit without any input from the customer or originator.