Calls for 1c and 2c coins to be scrapped in Ireland

There have been fresh calls for the 1c and 2c Euro coins to be scrapped here in Ireland, seeing as it costs more money to make them than they are worth.

An Irish ‘cash guru’, Karl Deeter, has called for the 1c and 2c Euro coins to be discontinued saying they’re “ridiculous” and a “waste of money”. In fairness to Karl, he’s not wrong there. The Central Bank spent nearly €930,000 in one year just to produce 58million 1c coins. That mean’s the cost of making a 1c coin is actually 1.6c. So it costs more to make them than they are actually worth. That doesn’t make much ‘cents’.

So what’s the point of keeping them if they’re worth feck all? Well, according to a spokesperson from the Central Bank, “One cent coins are produced according to demand. There is no other obligation to produce them at all.”

We wouldn’t be the first country to abolish the 1c or 2c coins from the nation’s wallets. Australia stopped using their's way back in 1991, while Finland don’t use their 1c or 2c coins at all. Instead they use a method called ‘Swedish rounding’ for rounding the price off to the nearest 5c.

A survey back in 2010 stated that around 89 per cent of Irish people favoured the discontinuation of the 1c and 2c coins. So do we still feel the same way? Throw in your two cents in the comments section below.