Money Guide Ireland

Are My Savings in Ireland Guaranteed?

First of all we had the Deposit Guarantee Scheme (DGS), which covers the first €100,000 per person in all the financial institutions that are authorised by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority to operate in Ireland.
This guarantee does not have an end date. The limit under this Deposit Guarantee scheme was increased from 20,000 euro to 100,000 euro  in September 2008 and Credit Unions were also included for the first time.

Later in September 2008,  the Irish Government announced it would guarantee 100% of all savings held by depositors in the following seven Irish banks and building societies:
AIB; Bank of Ireland; Anglo Irish Bank; Irish Life Permanent; EBS; Irish Nationwide Building Society; and Postbank.

This was known as the Government Bank Guarantee scheme and this guarantee ends on September 29th, 2010. UPDATE :   July 2010 This guarantee has now been extended to the end of December 2010. See  Extension of Bank Guarantee

See a  Summary of Irish Bank Guarantees Here

So – what about those people who are fortunate enough to have deposits of over €100,000 . Is there any extension to the guarantee after December 2010? –

Well – just to confuse us all a bit more – on December 9th 2009 the Irish Government introduced the “Eligible Liabilities Guarantee Scheme ” (ELG) . This scheme only applies to certain types of deposits and it extends the original bank guarantee scheme for a maximum of five years. It only applies to  institutions that apply to join the new scheme.
AIB, Bank of Ireland , Irish Life Permanent and Anglo Irish Bank  Irish Nationwide and EBS have already joined the ELG scheme.

This  new ELG scheme does not extend the guarantee for on-demand deposits past December 2010  – but it does  extend the guarantee for some fixed-term deposits for up to 5 years (2015) . To qualify for the new guarantee – the fixed term deposit must be placed with a participating institution after it has joined the ELG scheme and before September 29th, 2010. December 31st 2010 .

So – the sensible thing to do if you have more than €100,000 on deposit with one of the Irish banks – is to either split it up into and spread it across other banks or move it into a fixed term deposit account with one of the “ELG” institutions before Sept 29th the end of 2010.