Sir, – I’ve had a similarly frustrating experience to Brianna Parkins (“Tears can work wonders when you’re forced to deal with an Irish bank”, People, January 24th) when I tried to open a bank account in Ireland a couple of years ago.
Like Brianna, I was asked for proof of address, and the banks list the kinds of documents they deem acceptable: bank statements, utility bills and the like. And of course, these had to be in English or Irish, which is a problem, since I live in Norway and these documents come, of course, in Norwegian.
The banks kindly offered to accept English translations. But getting an approved translator to translate and officially stamp a bank statement or electricity bill would cost up to €300 per document, so I would have preferred to avoid that expense.
Then I thought of Norway’s national population register, which is updated every time someone is born or dies, or moves to or from or within the country – a great idea that means this country doesn’t need to conduct a census every five or 10 years, and everyone, from the state to the smallest municipality, always has up-to-date data about how many inhabitants they have to serve.
Not only that, but the population register offers, free of charge, a proof of address document in no fewer than five languages – Norwegian, English, French, German and Spanish, signed by a senior civil servant and officially stamped by the Norwegian state national register of population.
Sure no bank ever sent out a statement with that kind of authority, I thought – they have to accept that. But no way, not an Irish bank!
Not even when I pointed out to them that Norwegian banks and utility companies, even the tax authorities, all get my address automatically from – where else – the national population register. Ah, but this kind of register is just not something an Irish bank would be willing to accept, I was told.
This was mid-pandemic, there were more important things to use time and energy on than trying to comprehend the stupidity of Irish banking bureaucracy. Norwegian banks, by the way, also have to comply with EU/EEA rules and verify the identity of their customers. But in Norway it’s enough to show ID, like a driving licence or passport showing your personal ID number – and the population register tells the bank the rest of what it needs.
I dropped all notion of opening an Irish bank account until I could travel to Dublin and present the population register’s proof of address in person at a good old-fashioned bank branch. Unlike Brianna, I didn’t even have to cry. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN McCAFFERTY,
Tertnes,
Norway.