The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA) has said it is not investigating any other allegations about overcharging at AIB other than its probe into the commission charged on some foreign currency transactions.
The news follows further weekend revelations about the bank, both in relation to foreign exchange dealing and alleged impropriety in moving elderly customers from deposit accounts to riskier investments where they have lost money.
Yesterday a spokesman for IFSRA said its investigators were primarily focusing on establishing the amount of money that has been wrongly taken from AIB customers, which the bank has said amounts to €14 million, and identifying those who are entitled to refunds.
"We are investigating this specific issue in relation to AIB. We have no other evidence of specific overcharging incidents at AIB or other financial institutions. If we did, we would look into them," he said.
AIB said it would not make any further comment on the incident while the investigation is under way.
The regulator had contacted AIB's compliance officer a week earlier to ask the bank to investigate an allegation that it had been incorrectly charging a 1 per cent rate of commission on certain foreign exchange transactions since 1996, when it had been authorised to charge just 0.5 per cent.
The State's biggest bank claimed this was due to a clerical error and has said that its senior management were unaware of the problem until last week.
In the weeks before IFSRA brought the issue to the bank's attention, officials at AIB had already moved to correct the rate of commission being charged on the currency converters used by bank staff to carry out these foreign exchange transactions.
The bank has confirmed that almost all of the machines had been altered by the end of April, before the official inquiry began.
The officials involved in rectifying the problem were said to have been at a fairly junior level and the bank claims they acted without informing senior managers. Bank staff using the machines were not informed why the alterations were being made.
Yesterday, Fine Gael finance spokesman Mr Richard Bruton said the systematic overcharging of certain AIB customers over an eight-year period showed deeper problems at the bank. Mr Bruton said the incident showed that AIB staff did not understand their obligations to their customers.
He also criticised the Government for its failure to adopt adequate legislation to protect consumers. "At the first hurdle, IFSRA's consumer director, Ms Mary O'Dea, finds herself let down by Government because there is no legislation that would make a sanction a reality. This is a chronic failure," he said.
Mr Bruton added that it was bizarre that "directors of financial institutions are under no obligation to undertake that these organisations are compliant" with all relevant legislation while directors of companies across most sectors of the economy had to formally state that they were.
Green Party finance spokesman Mr Dan Boyle has called for the imposition of a further bank levy to create money for a special financial consumer protection fund. This fund would be administered by IFSRA.
Both the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, and the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, have said that AIB should do whatever is necessary to identify the customers and repay them, in order to "restore confidence" in the bank.
