DUBLIN, Ireland, Oct. 20 (UPI) — Shoppers in Ireland may be seeing fewer 1- and 2-cent coins floating around after the Central Bank of Ireland announced plans to phase out the currency.
The coins will still be valid as legal tender, but voluntary “rounding” of cash transactions to the nearest five cents will become the practice at retailers, the bank said Monday. After a trial run in a single Irish town, 85 percent of customers and 100 percent of retailers encouraged rolling out the plan on a national level.
The Irish 1-cent piece costs the government 1.65 cents to produce, the 2-cent coin, 1.94 cents. Eliminating the currency could ultimately save taxpayers money.
Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Canada and the Netherlands are among countries which have stopped producing small change and employ the rounding practice. In Ireland, though, there are still more than 1.09 billion two-cent coins worth nearly $25 million still in circulation and 1.4 billion 1-cent coins, so the transition is expected to be slow.
The United States keeps pennies in circulation, but many regard the coins as a nuisance to the point many retailers keep a supply at the cash register for their customers’ convenience.
A Daytona Beach, Fla., restaurant announced Monday it would discontinue using pennies, nickels and dimes, rounding a customer’s bill to the nearest quarter. Mario Stemberger of the Dancing Avocado Kitchen said his employees spend about 182 hours per year simply counting the restaurant’s coins.
It’s not just restauranteurs who find the coinage irksome.
In 2001 and again in 2006, U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., introduced legislation to get rid of the penny, but both measures failed.
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