Human error to blame for Ulster bank glitch, but computer seen fleeing scene of crime.

Hidden away beneath the very public outcry as TSB suffered major IT problems was news that Royal Bank of Scotland owned Ulster Bank suffered its own computer problem, although this one was blamed on a human using the computer.

Customers of the Irish arm of RBS reported, through social media, that money had disappeared from their accounts.

A statement from the bank identified the problem. “As a result of human error, a payment file did not process last night, which means that some transactions applied to some customers accounts since 20 April are temporarily not showing.”

“We investigated this issue as a matter of urgency and have already taken the necessary corrective action which will see recovery actions overnight.”

The bank said emergency cash of €500 per customer affected.

The problem also a reminder that even if the IT systems themselves are working perfectly, the people that control them are only human after all.

Back in 2012 when RBS had a huge IT disaster when a batch processing mistake caused customers to be locked out of accounts for a week, there were reports that a worker at an Indian unit of RBS pressed the wrong button.

These are still IT disasters. When a car crash is caused by a human it is still a traffic accident.

Meanwhile TSB customers have been told they will be compensated for any losses incurred from the systems outages over the last week. The problems, related to the banks migration to a new core banking system, are fixed according to RBS although at the time of writing some customers said they are still having problems.

Some customers could not access their accounts while some that could reported funds going missing or appearing without explanation. Some even reported being able to access the accounts of other customers.