Monaghan residents are believed to be amongst 43,000 bank customers who are being refunded after not taking cash from Bank of Ireland ATMs.

It has emerged this week that €1.3m will be refunded to 14,000 Bank of Ireland customers, while a total of €1.7m will be returned to 29,000 customers of other banks who used the Bank of Ireland ATMs. The ATM fault occurred during a four-year period ending in October 2009, when those users' accounts were still debited for the cash by Bank of Ireland. The average refund is estimated to be in the region of €93.

When users complete a transaction and walk away from a cash machine, leaving their cash and/or card behind, the machine pulls the money or card back in after a certain period of time. However, they were still debited, and Bank of Ireland said this issue arose following the installation of anti-fraud measures, which resulted in the normal system response of an automatic refund failing for these particular transactions.

It is believed that the bank discovered the issue recently during an internal monitoring process. In a statement this week, Bank of Ireland has apologised for this error and says it has enhanced procedures for handling 'all such incomplete transactions so that customers accounts will not be debited.' Bank of Ireland said that each year about six people per ATM walk away leaving their cash and/or card. This they say is a relatively small amount considering that Bank of Ireland dispenses about €16.6bn through its ATM network every year.