One thing I will say is this: it's a good thing if you have a credit card where you can monitor your balance online. AFAIK, you need to have a current account with the card provider (except maybe MBNA???) in order to do this. I recently closed my BoI CC account and transferred to AIB (where I have my current a/c). I find that is also useful to be able to make transfers to your CC account quicker than you can if your current account is with a different financial institution than you CC provider.
Clubman:
I would agree of course that a CC should not be used as a source of medium or long term credit. But I don't know if there are necessarily better options for short (say, 1-6 months) term credit for two reasons.
1. The lower CC interest rates (e.g. AIB Platinum, One Direct Gold, ptsb ICE) are not far off overdraft rates. I don't know if you can arrange a personal loan for such a short period of time-but if you can, early repayment can go down as a 'black mark' on your ICB record?
2. Even overdrafts might be more expensive. Most have a €20 arrangement fee on top of the interest payable.
Anyway, I wouldn't advise anyone to run up balances on their credit cards, especially the 'standard' ones with higher rates. But sometimes I don't pay off the entire balance by the due date, I find this to be the case after Christmas, and maybe after the summer holidays. I've never got myself into any difficulties this was, and haven't paid a fortune (in € as opposed to %) in interest. But obviously you need to be disciplined in order to make sure that you don't allow the balance to snowball, and as such, this isn't a good idea for everyone.