Transferring from E*Trade/US$ to Irish bank/€ - any tips?

Anybody done this? I've got c. US$12K in my (US) E*Trade account that I want to repatriate to Ireland in €s. Anybody done this? Any tips? E.g. let E*Trade convert from US$ to € (2.25% charge)? Or would it be cheaper to let the Irish bank (most likely Halifax or PTSB) do the conversion at this end? Is it possible to get a better deal via the likes of XEtrade.com? Would XEtrade.com or the like work from an E*Trade account anyway or do you need a regular US/US$ account? Any other gotchas/tips? (I am aware of the standard US$25 charge levied by E*Trade for domestic or international wire transfers). Are there any (US or other) security/money laundering issues that might hold up a transfer of US$12K? I thought I heard something about transfers of US$10K or more automatically triggering certain checks (and I'm not thinking of the Irish money laundering rules here)?

clubman you could try xe or try currency.ie in Ireland, cheaper than converting with etrade for sure

Thanks. I'm trying to open an XEtrade account at the moment so I'll see how that goes.

transfermate.com have us and irish accounts, xetrade has us and german account so take longer

Thanks for the tip. I'll look at them too.