At the back of a squash court in the UCD sports centre, an ordinary IBM PC, linked to a normal phone line with a standard modem, yesterday transferred deals worth hundreds of millions of euros. Almost half of the applicants for Telecom Eireann shares chose to do so by direct electronic debit, and each of these requests must be relayed through the squash court computer.
In fact, AIB have taken over three squash courts, and a staff of up to 100 are gamely ploughing through the bundles like election count workers. The details from each form are entered on to a floppy disk on an unconnected PC, then checked with software that can tell if the bank sorting code and account number match.
The floppies are taken to the computer at the back with the modem, and zipped down the line to the AIB data centre in Donnybrook.
But if this operation sounds haphazard or rudimentary, it is in fact pioneering. AIB says this is the first time anywhere in the world a flotation of this size has allowed payment by direct debit. In all, around 250,000 of the 550,000 applicants for shares, chose direct debit.
"The proportion far exceeded our expectations," said Mr Mick O'Neill, AIB's manager of electronic banking. "The original target was 30 per cent."
Irish people had thus far shown themselves to be more reluctant than most to sign up for direct debits, he said, and the sudden change of heart for the Telecom flotation was welcome.
He said there was no particular pattern to the applications, and that someone asking for £250 (€317) worth of shares was as likely as someone looking for £100,000 to use direct debit. Those that did, he added, would have any money refunded to them placed electronically into their accounts rather than receiving a cheque in the post.
"This being such a success augurs well for electronic commerce in Ireland; it could be the turning of the corner," Mr O'Neill said.
His team has been staying late at night, until 11 o'clock, typing in millions of lines of financial details.
So far, Mr O'Neill said, touching a wooden table, nothing had gone out of control.
