[ILUG] another bank related question

[Gareth 'bigbro' Eason]

Paul Murray wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Tom Salmon <tom at tomsalmon.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Next month I will be moving to Ireland from the UK, to start a job near Dublin.
>> Looking around at a few banks, several are requiring proof of address (utility
>> bill) to open a current account - which of course is a problem if you're new
>> to a country.
> 
> Go to your local police station, aka "garda" station with ID and
> they'll fill out a form for you which suffices for this very purpose,
[snip]

	Welcome to Ireland, the land that laughs in the face of security, 
preferring instead to use the tried and tested 'utility bill' of 
infallibility for evidence of all things.

	Quite seriously, it's entirely possible your employer will be able to 
pay your first month's salary to you without you having to create a bank 
account - or at least forward you an advance. Most banks are reasonable, 
but seemingly staffed by unreasonable people. I have asked two banks for 
written details of what ID requirements are mandated by them, simply 
because I'd like to track it back to the legislation. One bank was 
willing to tell me what their (made up?) requirements were but were 
completely unwilling to put anything in writing. Another bank showed me 
a laminated sheet with details of what constituted their acceptable ID 
requirements but were completely unwilling to even make a copy of the 
sheet for me as it was 'secret.' (I kid you not! They were able to show 
it to me but not give me a copy...)

	From completely personal experience (I cannot emphasise this enough - 
experiences appear to vary wildly from branch to branch and even within 
the same branch dependant on who you meet) I have found AIB utterly 
unhelpful in branch and have found Permanent TSB frustrating but 
sufficiently competent to serve my limited requirements. Open24 online 
TSB banking appears to be relatively browser agnostic - it works on 
Firefox on Linux quite happily, though one person on this list has 
implied there may be security concerns (though this is an implication 
and no evidence either way has been provided.)

	Good luck with getting things sorted. Be prepared to visit the bank at 
least twice, if not three times. A letter from your employer stating 
your home address is useful (and what I used.) Ask your employer if they 
would be willing to provide something. As someone else stated, it's 
relatively painless (though unnecessarily time consuming and 
beaurocracy-ridden) to get a basic account which only has an ATM card - 
this is absolutely sufficient for direct debits, etc. After 6 months or 
so you should have no problem 'upgrading' to a laser card (debit card) 
and potentially adding credit cards if you want them too.

	Hope that helps.

	Best regards,
	-->Gar