The European Commission intervened with some equivalent of dawn raids on some of our more prestigious banks. After a lot of huffing and puffing the charges which the Director of Consumer Affairs had ruled to be reasonable mysteriously turned out not to be needed after all. The banks persisted even longer with the charges accruing to withdrawals of, for instance, French francs from an ATM in France. They charged a 3% levy on such withdrawals until the European Union intervened. They then conceded that the same charges would be applied to ATM use elsewhere in Europe as are charged in Ireland.