If you have old £20 and £50 exchange them before 30th September

Totally false rubbish.

UK £20 & £50 can no longer be be used in shops after 30th September. They DO NOT become worthless.

UK banks and post offices will continue to accept them for many years. If you have them and you are keep them for a future visit to the UK, simply pop into a high street bank and they will exchange it.

I had a few £5 notes (withdrawn 5 years ago) and simply walked into a Natwest branch and they simply took them and gave me £60 back. This was in April 2022.

A positive move if it means no more Mickey Mouse £20 and £50s issued by Bank Of Ireland, Northern Bank, Bank Of Scotland etc that cause nothing but hassle when trying to use them outside the issued area.

I have to laugh when you hand over a £50 note in the UK, it's like you are passing over a €500 note the level of examination they give it.

The UK's note of choice is the £20. £50 notes aren't used very often. Get £500 out of an ATM in the UK and you'll always get £20's.

Lodge em into your bank here …

That's interesting with the self service tills, handy way to offload them if stuck and nowhere wants to take them.

If you have NI notes, you can exchange most of them for Bank of England notes in the corresponding banks in the Republic. Though you'd better get your skates on in the case of Ulster Bank notes. The licence the NI (and Scottish) banks have from the BoE to issue sterling notes says that they are obliged to exchange their own notes for BoE notes on demand. So, for example, if you have First Trust sterling notes after a trip to the north, you can walk into any branch of AIB in the south and they are obliged to exchange them for Bank of England notes. Same applies to Bank of Ireland (Donegall St., Belfast) notes.

This is not theory. I had a mix of NI notes after a week in Enniskillen a couple of years ago and my next trip was to GB so I needed to get rid of the NI money and get BoE notes. I took myself down to Blackrock in Co. Dublin, walked into the branches of AIB, BoI and Ulster Bank and did the same thing in each of them. I handed over the appropriate notes and said: 'these are your notes, can you exchange them please for Bank of England notes'. In all three cases, they did so, without question. Not as an FX transaction, a one for one swap.

Bear in mind that Ulster Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland are both part of the NatWest group so it should be possible to walk into a branch of Ulster Bank in the south with RBoS notes and get them exchanged. The other Scottish banks which issue notes (Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank) don't seem to be affiliated with any banks operating in the south.

You'll have a problem if you're stuck with Northern Bank notes, they were most recently owned by Danske Bank who no longer have any branches in the south.

I tried to exchange Bank of England notes for Euro in my PTSB bank yesterday and was told they don't do that anymore and haven't for a year and a half.

Banks are becoming less banks by the day.

The clerk told me Bank of Ireland still do exchange, but when I asked if I needed to have an account with them, he answered he didn't know.

I also asked him if their ceasing of exchange was due to Brexit and he answered he didn't know. Do bank-workers know anything about banking anymore? Yellow-pack jobs?

Anyway, except for going up to the North, where will I exchange the damn things?

Post Office does foreign exchange

No, it hasn't changed. The FX section of their website says they don't buy cash.

https://www.anpost.com/Money/Foreign-Currency/Foreign-Currency-Rates-Calculator