The euro made a few fleeting appearances on the streets of Dublin yesterday, but was generally lost in the throng attending the city's new year sales.

A few polite notices inside some stores were the only physical signs a new currency had been born.

However, in the city's banks and buildings societies the new currency made its presence felt by imposing great stress on computer equipment which crashed in some bank branches, leaving customers without a foreign exchange service.

According to store owners, shoppers were either indifferent or uninformed about the new currency with few euro cheques or euro credit cards in evidence.

"There has been some interest in it, but we've had many people asking us where they can get the euro, both notes and coins," said Mr Ronan Faherty, the manager of Brown Thomas on Grafton Street. Euro notes and coins will not be available until 2002.

The stores did not seem too concerned about the issue either, with little sign of dual pricing in Arnotts, Roches Stores and Marks and Spencer.

Clerys had dual pricing in its furniture department, but does not expect to have dual pricing throughout its store until March. A spokeswoman for Clerys said the dual pricing in the furniture store illustrated some of the problems likely in the future. "We ended up with four prices on the items - the normal retail price, the sale price, the euro price and the euro sale price. This bewildered more than a few customers," she said.

The majority of food retailers have yet to introduce dual pricing in their stores.

Despite a directive from the Director of Consumers Affairs, Ms Carmel Foley, many bank branches were not clearly displaying the new euro conversion rates. Other bank branches were unable to supply customers with euro travellers cheques because of lack of supply.

Meanwhile at the Central Bank there were a large number of calls seeking to find out was the bank offering foreign exchange without charging commission, as required by the Maastricht Treaty.

A spokesman said the bank would buy the currencies of participating euro states from anyone who called into Dame Street, up to a limit of 1,000 euros.

However, he said the bank would not be selling foreign currency of participating euro states to the public in return for pounds, a move likely to disappoint holidaymakers.

All financial institutions published their foreign exchange charges in the newspapers yesterday morning after a directive was issued by Ms Foley.

The financial institutions first published them shortly before Christmas and were criticised then for increasing commission charges despite the arrival of the euro.

They had the chance to drop these charges before yesterday mornings deadline, but no financial institution chose this option.

Bureaux de changes also published their foreign exchange rates yesterday and were more expensive than many financial institutions (see graphic).

ISME, the small business organisation, said banks had compensated themselves for the loss of income on foreign exchange transactions by massive increases in commission charges. The group said the director of consumer affairs had approved the bank charges and it advised businesses to seek an explanation from their bank. It said increases of between 300 and 600 per cent were evident.

The Fine Gael spokesman on finance, Mr Michael Noonan, said he wanted an explanation from Ms Foley as to why the charges had risen in so many cases.

"The sanctioning by the Director of Consumer Affairs of new levels of bank commission for changing Irish pounds into non-euro currencies is a matter of grave concern. Percentage increases of between 300 and 600 per cent certainly require an explanation," he said.