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A GALWAY PENSIONER has convinced Ulster Bank to honour a deposit of £1,000 punts made by her late husband in 1975.
89-year-old Teresa Scahill found the deposit slip recently when going through a suitcase in her home in Dunmore, Co Galway.
When she brought the slip to the attention of the bank they refused to honour it.
However, after staging a number of protests outside a Galway Ulster Bank branch, and after her grand-nephew posted a photo of her protesting on Facebook, the bank has relented.
“I’ve done enough of talking about it at this stage,” Teresa told TheJournal.ie.
There’s people who say I should have asked for an awful lot more, but I got what I needed and what my grandchildren need and that’s enough.
It’s not my money you know, it’s for my grandchildren.
She added that she’s “not used to this level of publicity”.
Teresa’s husband John lodged the money in 1975 after being diagnosed with a serious heart condition. He passed away in 1990.
When she provided all documentation requested of her to the bank and to their dormant accounts division in both Dublin and Northern Ireland they still refused to honour the deposit.
Following this Teresa escalated her protest both by standing outside a bank branch carrying a placard and by taking to the airwaves with Galway Bay FM.
“I just want what’s mine, and I can’t understand why they can’t tell me what they’ve done with the money,” she told Keith Finnegan on the radio station in early July.
This just shows that Ireland at the moment is no place for old people.
But I won’t be giving up. Blood and sweat went into making that money, and I mean that literally.
Teresa said she estimated the value of the deposit would have increased by 40% over time.
Different estimates as to the value of the deposit are circulating, but the common consensus would seem to be that it would currently be worth in the region of €12,000 accounting for interest.
A spokesman for Ulster Bank told TheJournal.ie that they won’t be commenting on the issue as they don’t comment on the cases of individual customers.
Legislation was introduced in 2001 under the Dormant Accounts Act to help reunite account holders with their dormant funds held in banks, building societies and An Post.
A dormant account is an account that has shown no activity for 15 years.
Unclaimed money is typically transferred to a fund managed by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA).
However, the rights of original account holders are not affected by the transfer to the fund and they can always reclaim the funds (including interest).
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So they had her money for 40 years and gave her nothing, meanwhile if you go overdrawn they charge you 15 euro.
Banks for you…. If she had owed the bank £1,000 for 40years, how much interest would of that being?
Only one word ‘wank*rs’
£53,700.66 is what they owe her.
+ costs.
I love the line “we do not comment on individual cases” which at this stage is the universal translation of “we’ve done something wrong and don’t want to admit it”
More accurate to say “we’ve been caught doing something wrong and don’t want to talk abut it”.
If they never talked after doing something wrong they’d be mutes :)
You owe them money and they bankrupt you, they owe you money and the law can’t help. Typical Ireland
Fair play to her, for ever and a day the banks have just ignored their customers and did whatever they liked with little or no regulations as we all know.
I know Teresa and I also knew her late husband John. They ran a business in Dunmore for many years . Delighted to see that she got her money back, not many take on the banks and win.
Fantastic end result, goes to show if you name and shame a company who’s blatantly in the wrong they give in, they hate negative publicity, fair play to this lady.
It’s a pity this lady did not take the steps to have what she was really entitled too…
She should have taken this case to it’s final conclusion, and got what she richly deserves, whatever that amount was, pity really..
Fair play to her for her perseverance! Delighted for her.
Delighted for her! The banks are Robbin’ Bastids. Hope she got thousands in interest too.
That generation know how to get things done. My late uncle paid a lot for a leather pair of shoes once. He was horrified to discover they started to let in water after he had them for two weeks. The shoes refused to do anything for him. It was the 1980s and consumer law was optional for a lot of shops back then. My uncle packed a lunch and flask bought the limerick leader and headed into the shop at quarter to five. Three quarters of hour before closing time. He sat down and settled in to read his paper. He told the shop he wasn’t leaving without his refund. They threatened to call the garda. He said fine as the limerick leader reporter was on his way. He wasn’t lol anyway after 40 mins of him having his picnic and reading the paper on the shop floor he got his full refund lol That’s not the half of his antics but he was a fantastic uncle and I still miss him every day.
@Catherine You really have to love and admire people like this. I can’t help wondering if Teresa Scahill wasn’t entitled to considerably more than what she got, you can be sure if you or I owed a debt to that bank, any bank, since 1975 they’d calculate interest to the smallest percent yet it doesn’t seem to apply here. This is yet another example of why they deserve to be despised.
Next time Ulster Bank Customer service ring me to ask if Im happy with the service, Ill tell them I ‘don’t comment on the cases of individual service providers’ You will have to speak to my ‘Spokesman’ …
the bank of Ireland had £86 sterling belonging to me in a dormant account. they want a notarized letter from me to get it back. that letter would cost as much.
I have a similar problem. I received a few hundred punts redundancy money in 1982 and lodged it to a new account. Being young and careless I forgot about it until the deposit book was discovered at the bottom of a box recently. The bank say their records are only retained for 7 years and that there’s only €5 in the account. The deposit book shows that I made no transactions at all. I now intend following this up and that lady is my inspiration.
Good luck with that Bean, I have been trying to help an elderly uncle with money “disappearing” from his bank account which he didn’t take out and only discovered recently. The bank says they can’t go back further than 7 years. We’ve had solicitors and Gardai involved but to no avail. The 7 year rule is their “get out clause” and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it, they hold all the cards as usual.
When I read things like this I always wonder about the people who didn’t find the lodgement slip or bank book etc..and all the thousands (millions?) that are kept quiet by the banks unless someone kicks up a fuss.
“we do not comment on individual cases” must be the greatest cop out statement of all time. Shame on this crowd of shysters fighting this old lady over ownership of her own money.
Well done, you doughty old girl, fighting to honour your husband’s memory in that the poor man was trying to make provision for you. However, you are far too much of a lady, and have let these greedy scoundrels off far too lightly.
I wish I was as lucky. As this woman. Good on yea. I’m still fighting. The same bank
We must all realise that the only way to deal with financial institutions is to treat them like dirt because that is their preferred way of dealing with their customers. Our custom is “valued” to them only when they are making money out of us.
Just one you don’t confuse that with the poor divils behind the counter working for peanuts!
There is a reason they call them banksters.
Fair dues to Teresa, she beat the skum bank, she was very brave to fight them, more people should do it.
Fair play to her…thieving banks
The banks based in Ireland could at least have had the decency to keep a low profile after the bank guarantee and the scale of the misrepresentation of their financial positions became established. They didn’t waste time advertising as the banks that were there to help homeowners and businesses. Terrible PR miscalculation.
What is it now, it would be massive due to what it is now from inflation etc, interest and the euro versus the pound?
Great stuff Mrs Lydon.
Toe Rags that UBS crowd
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