All the banks in Ireland now try to charge current account customers something for using a current account. Some banks will waive the charges if you meet certain criteria – but other banks make a charge to all customers.
See our page comparing bank charges here .
Current account charges started being an issue in the last couple of years as the banks started looking for more revenue to help reduce their losses. Some people could easily be paying bank charges of around €170 a year. That could be reduced by at least €150 by switching banks.
The Central Bank recently released some figures on the number of people switching current accounts from one bank to another . In 2011 4862 people switched bank accounts . The numbers increased to 8128 in 2012 and in 2013 there were 14,439 switchers.
Some of these switchers would have had no choice if they were customers of Danske Bank – who started closing current accounts in late 2013.
Some of the switchers in 2012 may have moved from Ulster Bank after their IT problems caused havoc for some account holders.
There are currently 5,429,498 current accounts in operation between the various banks – so there must be plenty of people with more than one account given that the population of over 14’s is only 3.6 million.
In the UK in 2012 there were 1.2 million switchers out of the 80 million current account holders. To match that rate of switching here in Ieland we would need to see 81,442 people switching a year . We are switching at less than one fifth of the rate in the UK.