I never thought I'd be one of those sad old types harping on about how many pence there were in the old pound. But with the introduction of the euro only 18 months away, I can look forward to fumbling with an alien currency in shops, just like my grandfather did during decimalisation, and pathetically whining at the shopkeeper: "What's that in old money?"
As you read this, the 900 million coins that will make up the first batch of Irish euros are being minted at the National Currency Centre in Sandyford, Co Dublin, at a rate of 2,000 coins per minute. The workers at the centre are doing double shifts to ensure that the 243 million euro notes we will also need are ready for Irish pockets and purses. Huge, Scrooge-like piles of money are being put into storage houses, ready for distribution late next year.
The man co-ordinating the national currency changeover, Philip Hamell, chairman of the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland, is confident that it will go smoothly. He has been preparing and fine-tuning a national plan for the changeover for a number of years now and, with the plans now firmly in place, euro day draws nearer.
"On January 1st, 2002, accounts in financial institutions - by which I mean banks, building societies and the like - will be converted automatically into euro at the fixed conversion rate," says Hamell. "This will be done free of charge. From then, cash coming out of the financial system will be in euro and any cash coming in as Irish pounds will be retained and not reissued."
Hamell expects that within the first week or two of the changeover, most of the money in circulation will be in euro. Although there will be a six-week dual period when the Irish pound and euro will be both legal tender, on February 9th, 2002, the Irish pound will cease to be legally acceptable. However, for those lucky enough to discover a stash of Irish notes under their mattress 10 years after the changeover, it will be indefinitely possible to exchange Irish pounds for euros at the Central Bank.
It seems that everything has been thought of by the changeover board. Hamell says that the public will just have to carry on as normal and the euro will simply come to them.
"It's euro as you go. Do what you normally do. Use your remaining Irish pounds, notes and coins. Just spend it as normal and you'll get change in euro. And when you go to the bank or building society, when you receive your social welfare payment, when you go to an ATM machine, you will get euro from them."
In the beginning, mostly Irish euro coins will be in circulation here, with the euro on the face and the national harp symbol on the reverse side. But as the new currency moves freely around the euro zone, French, German and Spanish euros will be passing through our pockets.
The French will be getting Irish euros as change in Parisian cafes. Helsinki buskers will have a few euro harps in their hats. You will be able to tell the origin of all euro coins by the one side bearing the national symbol of the country they come from. But as all euro notes will be uniform throughout Europe, no one will know where each individual note has come from.
"It was decided relatively early that if there were national symbols on the notes, there was a high risk of shopkeepers in Germany turning down Spanish notes - even though they are legal tender in each of the euro countries," explains Hugh O'Donnell, head of corporate services at the Central Bank. "For the man in the street, the small retailer, there might be an acceptance problem. That is less of a worry with coins. If someone doesn't take your half-a-dozen Irish euro coins on holiday, it's less of a problem than if they won't take your Irish euro notes. So, it was decided that the notes would be exactly the same."
Philip Hamell, however, expects that within a few months any acceptance problem will disappear for foreign euro coins. As we all become more familiar with Dante's portrait on the back of our Italian euro coins, or with King Juan Carlos on the back of our Spanish coins, we will even stop noticing that one euro is different from another. The initial romance of getting a Portuguese or Greek euro as change will quickly disappear.
What may be slower to disappear is the complex mental arithmetic we will all go through to understand just how much our new money is worth. But Hamell is confident that we won't still be moaning on about the old money in 20 years' time: "You'll quickly get a sense of the value of the euro when you're actually spending it. But if you want a rule of thumb, broadly speaking, a euro price will be about a quarter times bigger. So, for the euro figure, if you add a quarter to the Irish figure you'll be there or there abouts. You'll feel richer when you get your income, and poorer when you see the prices. But while the numbers change, the value won't. It's a fixed exchange rate."
As for our old Irish money, O'Donnell thinks it won't be worth keeping, except for nostalgia value. The notes will be destroyed at the Currency Centre in Sandyford and the coins will be melted and sold off for their metal value. And I'm sure all that will fetch a farthing or two.
