They may have bought a pint of Guinness in Dublin or a rose in Tralee, but all Ireland's defunct punts and pennies are now heading to the same resting place - Spain.
Based at an industrial park in the northern city of Bilbao, Spanish smelting firm Elmet has won an exclusive contract to destroy and melt down all Irish coinage pushed out by the euro after January 1st.
The coins, among 12 currencies to be scrapped across the euro zone, arrive in trucks under armed guard, before being cut up, tipped into hoppers and fed into the glowing gullet of a giant industrial smelter.
"All Ireland's coins end up right here," said Elmet director Mr Jose Antonio Boveda, gesturing towards hundreds of pallets stacked with cash. "Between now and July we aim to process 7,000 tonnes of coins."
Elmet is a unit of the Belgian group Non Ferrous International (NFI).
"The copper retrieved will be used for a variety of products, including electric cables, copper pipes, and computer chips," Mr Boveda said. "The remainder has no use for us."
Elmet's sister firm in nearby Zaragoza, Botrade, has an exclusive contract with the Spanish government to destroy and reprocess its pesetas. Between them, the two plants process some 30 million coins a day.
After the 12 countries that have adopted the euro ditch their currencies this year, some 260,000 tonnes including French francs, German pfennigs, Portuguese escudos and Dutch guilders are set to spill on to the scrap metals market.
But analysts say the scrap metal boom will have little impact on market prices.
During the last three years when euros were being minted, the copper used to make the new coins accounted for just two percent of European demand, said Mr John Schonenberger, chief executive of the European Copper Institute (ECI).
These old coins that are being recycled here contain less copper than the euro, so pulling them out of circulation is going to have a negligible impact on prices, the official, whose organisation is sponsored by the metals industry, said.