Enquiry and refund account to be established in AIB currency row

An independent adjudicator - to be named within a week - will conduct the probe which is expected to be completed by mid-June.

Ireland’s largest bank estimates that its records should enable it to identify, contact and reimburse at least two-thirds of the customers involved and deal with over 80% of the amount to be reimbursed.

In a statement issued today, the bank said :"We believe that with the co-operation of customers, the great majority of the remaining transactions can be identified and customers reimbursed. A simple process for dealing with these cases will be published shortly."

As previously stated, AIB will not benefit from any overcharges levied on customers who cannot be identified.

Due to technical reasons, the restitution process cannot begin until August because systems have to be developed.

AIB Chairman Dermot Gleeson said: "On behalf of AIB, I wish to apologise sincerely to our customers. Charging the wrong price, however it is occasioned, is entirely unacceptable.

"Customers who paid the wrong price for foreign exchange transactions will be reimbursed with interest. We will seek to address simply and speedily the cases of all customers entitled to reimbursement.

"The process we are undertaking is designed among other things to identify the reasons and causes behind this failure both to the AIB Board and to IFSRA. Such an independent inquiry will ensure that the changes, which are clearly necessary, will be appropriate and complete.

"Some of the reporting of what has happened has suggested that responsibility might be assigned to junior staff. Let me make it clear that responsibility will be fully and independently determined by the investigation and that issue will be addressed by the AIB Board. Nothing in the information available to date suggests that responsibility for what happened rests with junior staff," Gleeson added.

The bank also said it would be making no further comment pending completion of the investigation.