The first rule of BOI ATM Withdrawal Club? Tell everyone

It was the stuff of myth – majestic, thrilling and capable of drawing elated crowds. Hundreds ventured out into the dark in pursuit of a lucky break, hoping to be treated to some weeknight magic. Now was the time for a glorious cosmic bonanza to remind us that not everything is terrible and, yes, the universe can deliver.

But enough about the Perseid meteor shower, have you heard the one about ATMs spewing out free money to Bank of Ireland customers?

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is not the light from the oncoming train but the teal glow of a cash machine.

Like the annual passing of the planet through the debris trail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, the bank’s latest tech collapse could be described as spectacular.

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Just as the shooting stars that dropped by were not, in fact, actual stars enjoying an after-hours disco but tiny pieces of space grit burning up in the atmosphere, the money that materialised in Bank of Ireland accounts earlier this week was not real currency but shards of incompetence manifesting as euro.

The first rule of Tuesday Night Withdrawal Club is that you must tell everyone you know about Tuesday Night Withdrawal Club. Via social media and WhatsApp, word spread. The seemingly wondrous glitch lured long-suffering customers out to participate in what counts in 2023 as a throwback phenomenon: ATM queues.

To reinforce the nostalgic community feel to proceedings, An Garda Síochána rocked up to some ATM gatherings, not because they fancied a bank bonus of their own, but because regional control rooms had received more than 40 calls from members of the public concerned about unusual activity.

It’s true that in the card-only orthodoxy we increasingly live in, cash withdrawals are no longer standard operating procedure for many. Who knew they merited police intervention though? Maybe it was just the sheer weirdness of anyone having money left mid-month that automatically triggered suspicion.

Either way, gardaí dispersed queues in the livelier locations. Apparently, this nocturnal lining of wallets was not what Catherine Martin meant when she said she wanted to revive the night-time economy.

[ Garda response to ATM glitch far from ideal, but controversy likely to be short-lived ]

What was going through the minds of the ATM-bound? Did those who had no money, or next to no money, think they could beat the system in broad street light and keep their sudden windfall? For sure, even the temporary triumph of hope over expectation can be intoxicating. Alas, Bank of Ireland didn’t make a pretax profit of €1.04 billion in the first half of the year by being generous.

Perhaps some queuers made the reasonable assumption that the bank’s technical ineptitude was so complete, it could no longer keep track of debits and credits – just like its customers couldn’t, as its app had been a white screen of nothing for much of the day.

But the bank wouldn’t be a bank if it couldn’t catch up with its customers’ true balances eventually. We should probably be relieved that it didn’t have to raid the stationery cupboard for stacks of ledger paper and a supply of disused branch pens with their little chains still attached.

Perhaps other customers, unable to conduct normal online transactions thanks to the bank’s borked platforms, recalled the occasion in 2019 when it also became impossible to withdraw cash – cash that was theirs. In that context, an immediate expedition to an ATM would seem logical.

“Wad’s going on?” asked The Sun. It’s a good question. This wasn’t a software upgrade gone wrong. The bank wasn’t even hacked. Instead, these were the sort of humdrum tech inadequacies that the Central Bank fined Bank of Ireland €24.5 million for two years ago when it castigated it for problems dating back to 2008.

The regulator said then that the bank didn’t have a proper framework in place to ensure continuity of service in the event of serious tech disruption. I don’t want to prejudge the process but I am sensing another fine coming on.

[ Bank of Ireland warns credit ratings could be affected by withdrawals made during IT outage ]

Being neither a Bank of Ireland current account customer nor a believer in free grands, there was no midnight ATM flit for me. I didn’t make it very far on Monday either, despite absorbing an expert warning that it would be “the last of the great nights” to see the Perseids.

I went out on my balcony after 10pm and looked north as instructed. The clouds were wispy, which seemed promising, but the apartment block perpendicular to mine obstructed the view. I thought about going down to the dual carriageway and hanging out there for a while. Then I remembered that I lived in a city and it was all pointless.

The Perseids will return next August but Comet Swift-Tuttle, from which the “prolific” meteor shower originates, won’t pass close to the Earth until the year 2126. This, coincidentally, is also the current estimated date for the arrival of a reliable Bank of Ireland app.

It used to be feared, before its orbit was properly calculated, that Swift-Tuttle might collide with Earth in 2126, which would obviously be terrible news for insurance companies.

Astronomers revise the precise odds a lot but the likelihood of any devastating impact event from a comet or asteroid in the next 1,000 years is generally agreed to be infinitesimal. The latest thinking is that the chances are lower even than the prospect of Irish banks passing on interest rate increases to savers. They do remain higher, however, than the possibility of an ATM granting your wish for a tenner.

The lesson, as ever, is to try to control the controllables because so many things in life, from shambolic financial institutions to elusive celestial displays, are beyond our influence. The second, related lesson – as horrific as this might seem – is to think about switching your current account.