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IRELAND HAS SPENT €11.8 million minting coins with a monetary value of only €7.1 million since 2004, TheJournal.ie can reveal.
Data published by the Department of Finance shows that Ireland has minted 713.6 million 1c coins in the last eight years.
Those coins have a monetary value of €7,136,862.73 – but because the Central Bank estimates that it costs 1.65 cent to mint every individual 1c coin, Ireland will have spent €11,775,823.50 in creating those coins.
As a result, Ireland has lost €4,638,960.78 having to produce the 1c coins.
The figures also show that Ireland has minted nearly 443 million 2c coins in the same period of time – coins which cost an estimated 1.94 cent to produce.
This means Ireland has spent almost €4.3 million minting coins with a monetary value of just over €4.4 million.
Ireland has minted a total of 3.3 billion euro coins since the physical notes and coins became legal tender in 2002.
The coins minted since 2004 – the first year for which individualised breakdowns are available – have a total monetary value of €282.8 million.
The Central Bank’s National Payments Plan, published last month, outlined plans for one medium-sized Irish town to start phasing 1c and 2c coins out of physical usage by the end of 2013.
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