An MEP says insurance companies need to be more vigilant.

Companies who overcharge their customers should be held accountable with tougher sanctions.

That’s the call from a Fianna Fail MEP who says consumers are losing out on hundreds of euro because of tech mistakes.

It comes after Axa Insurance was forced to issue refunds to 400 customers who were overcharged over a number of years.

Ireland South MEP Billy Kelleher says companies need to be vigilant for any mistakes and be punished when they aren’t.

“We continually have these particular issues occurring,” he said.

“While some of them may be unintended or completely outside of control, very often they’re as a result of not investing enough in their IT systems and enhancing their capacity and our capabilities and ensuring that they have proper systems to protect themselves both in cybersecurity, but also in terms of ensuring that they have proper administrative IT systems in place,” he added.

Kelleher says Ireland’s failure to tackle overcharging issues threatens to harm our international reputation as a tech hub and believes these kinds of mistakes shouldn’t happen in this day and age.

“We pride ourselves as being a first world country in terms of technology and software capacity and the idea that we would have financial institutions and insurance companies continually having problems with their IT systems resulting in overcharging I think that is the wrong message,” he said.