Re: ..
Just to follow up, I went with a direct electronic transfer in the end,
using my own bank, AIB. Their standard foreign transfer fee is EUR20.
I was unlucky, this actually took 5 whole working days:
* I submitted it to a local branch
* Transferred by internal post to branch where my account is
* 48 hours after submission, my branch rang me as a security check
(there was no section on the form for contact details, so if
my phone number on file had been out of date, this would have
delayed things.). They didn't tell me at the time, but I could
have avoided this step if I'd gone into my branch directly.
* Money then debited from my current account
* 48 hours later it arrived at recipient bank HQ
If I was lucky this would only have taken 24 hours
* Took another day to get to recipients account
AIB also have a priority option for EUR32 which should have taken a day or two off this.
Interestingly my US friends posted some documents to me last
Wednesday which arrived at home on Tuesday. So the mail service
does seem to be improving, and registered post would have got
there in time.
However, AIB wanted to charge me EUR4.4 for a USD draft, and I
guess registered postal costs would have taken that close to
the EUR20 anyway (not to mention the possible hassle if was
lost/stolen/delayed.).