Irish accounts to pay bills

[Keith]

With recent guarentees from the Irish government, Irish euro accounts, with good rates if interest, appear very attractive. Could somebody please tell me if you can use one of these accounts to pay things like direct debits in France eg local taxes. Also if you want to transfer euros to Credit Agricole is there a cross-border charge for this?

 

Many thanks

 

Keith

[Anton Redman]

Yes there are cross border charges but at least they are totally transparent rather than being so many percentille points of the mid market rate. Although the Euro simplified moving cash and coins they did not set up a faster cross border clearing system.

[ams]

What you are saying is correct.

 

A new system will commence shortly in  January 2009 called SEPA which means Single Euro Payments Area. After 2010 no charges will be made in the SEPA area, thus no additional charges will be paid by operating an Irish account. From what I understand the costs will be substantially reduced as and from 2009. I think that the UK may be included but am not certain.

 

I hope the above may be of some assistance.

 

ams

[BJSLIV]

Whatever the charges might be, I would be surprised if (m)any of the French government and utilities systems were capable of originating debits from foreign bank accounts.

 

[ams]

We have had no problems operating such a system in the past between BOI and C d'Epargne. perhaps the system has changed since 2005.

 

ams