CONSUMERS WHO are strapped for cash might want to look under sofas and rifle through the pockets of little-worn suits in search of some of the €361 million worth of pounds that were never exchanged for euro after the old currency ceased to be legal tender a decade ago.
Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the formal demise of the pound, and the Central Bank confirmed this amount of old currency remains unaccounted for.
Despite the passage of time, the old money is still coming in, and an average of more than €10,000 worth of the old currency was brought into the bank to be exchanged every working day last year. A Central Bank spokesman told The Irish Times that not a day passed without at least one person calling in to its Dame Street offices to swap the old for the new.
On January 1st, 2002, the Republic became one of seven eurozone countries to convert all ATMs to euro, and within days of the introduction of the new notes and coins, the vast majority of cash payments were being made in euro. Some six weeks later, on February 9th, the pound stopped being legal tender, and overnight the only place it could be exchanged was at the Central Bank.
The bank spokesman said yesterday it could not give out information about exactly how much of the old currency was being exchanged daily because of security concerns, but in 2011 €2.6 million worth of the old currency was exchanged at the bank’s Dame Street office, an average of €10,317 every day. Some €2.3 million of the pounds exchanged were notes, with the remainder made up of coins.
Despite this stream of money coming in, the Central Bank said that by the end of 2011 there was still €236 million in Irish bank notes missing, while €125.2 million worth of coins remained unaccounted for.
The good news for punt-hoarding consumers is there is no time-limit for people to cash in their old money. The Central Bank said yesterday it would continue to accept the money indefinitely, with the exchange rate frozen at 2002 levels.
