It's not often that you will hear someone complimenting Irish banks, with their padded margins, for playing fair by their customers. So, before you next castigate your local branch spare a thought for the customers of banks north of the Border and in Britain.

This week the board of Link, the network of ATMs dotted around the UK, decided to allow banks to charge people up to £1 sterling for the privilege of withdrawing money from these cash machines unless they are customers of the particular bank that owns the machine. Now, I don't know what the average withdrawal is from British ATMs, but in Ireland it is just more than £50. That would equate to an effective private "tax" of 2 per cent.

British banking customers have a right to feel aggrieved. Already they face "disloyalty charges" of up to £1.50 from their own banks if they withdraw money from their own accounts using other banks' ATMs.

So using an ATM other than your own bank's could cost you £2.50 or 5 per cent of the average withdrawal . . . some service.