People who paid by credit card for tickets for the cancelled Winter Wonderland event, due to have been held at the Curragh racecourse, are to have their money refunded.
The organiser of the event, Mr Adrian Smith, sent a fax to the Curragh racecourse last Monday stating that the event was not going ahead. This document has now been accepted by AIB as official confirmation of the cancellation.
AIB and other financial institutions will now write to card-holders explaining the situation and asking them to approve the refund.
Since news of the cancellation spread, people who bought tickets at €28 each have tried the contact numbers and the website for Winter Wonderland but none was operating. Mr Smith could not be contacted on either his mobile or home numbers.
Earlier yesterday, an AIB spokesman said that the bank had to be officially informed of the cancellation before it could do anything about the credit card payments but could not contact Mr Smith.
AIB acted as the acquiring bank for the event, meaning that it can, when informed officially of the cancellation, give "charge back", effectively a refund for all credit cards, not just those bearing the AIB logo.
The spokesman said the normal course was that the bank had to be informed of the situation by the person with whom it had the agreement and in this case it was Mr Smith.
Bank representatives then attempted to make contact with Mr Smith to acquire the official confirmation.
"We have been trying to contact Mr Smith but we have been unsuccessful," the spokesman said.
However, later yesterday, bank representatives received a copy of the fax Mr Smith sent to the Curragh Racecourse and have accepted that as the official confirmation.
AIB will write to its own card-holders and then to other issuing banks asking them to inform their customers.
Yesterday, Mr Paul Hensey, manager of the Curragh Racecourse, where the event was to have been held in December, said it had given the bank details of the fax it had received from Mr Smith, informing it of the cancellation.
Since Wednesday, staff at the Curragh racecourse had received around 500 calls from the public enquiring about Mr Smith.
"Even though we have no involvement with Winter Wonderland, this is the only number people have now. We can only direct them to the numbers we have for Mr Smith and tell them what we know," he said.
The potential ticket sales for the event were €2.8 million, on the basis of an estimated 100,000 people buying them.