Many of the agencies which are supposed to protect consumers, in particular the Director of Consumer Affairs and her office, let this country down during the transition to the euro because she was convinced by the banks of a scale of charges that turned out to be both unnecessary and a rip-off. She accepted their argument and it took the European Commission's intervention and effective dawn raids on the Bank of Ireland and AIB to "persuade" them that they were ripping us all off. I have reservations about the capacity of the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs to really let consumers know what is happening, to inform them and to ensure that they know what is happening, what prices are and therefore have some influence over how they spend.