Fire and smoke accompanied the new year's opening of the Castletroy Shopping Centre in Limerick yesterday although it had not been planned that way. Lunchtime shoppers were prevented from trying out their new currency after the fire alarm was sounded at 12.55 p.m.
They went outside to see black smoke emerge from an ESB sub-station in the centre which resulted in a loss of power to most of the shop units.
Ms Tina Porter was ready to pay in euro but had to leave her purchases behind. It was some consolation that she had tried out the new currency on some groceries on Tuesday. "It is grand. I am getting the hang of it fairly handily."
Ms Ciara Flanagan, who had to close her beauty salon, said the morning business had been fine. "Everyone is understanding. The banks are very good at explaining everything."
Superquinn reopened two hours after shoppers had been evacuated from their premises. The euro day had been going well, Mr Aaron Duggan, the assistant manager, said. With state-of-the-art computers, customers experienced few difficulties. "If anything, people are coming in with euro rather than Irish," he said.
Some teething problems occurred with shopping trolleys which were adapted to take both euro and £1 coins.
Shoppers were concentrating on getting rid of Irish currency and using euro exclusively.
"We had all the literature before. We are not stupid. We have degrees and we have calculators and grey matter," one elderly couple said.
Mr Chris Brennan said he had held on to a souvenir copy of all the Irish notes. "You are better off just getting out of pounds as quickly as you can and just dealing in euro."
Ms Nuala Greene said she had avoided any confusion by going to the bank to change her Irish money.
She believed people were already accustomed to the new currency after receiving dual prices on receipts for the last number of months. "I was working in a credit union when decimalisation took place and I had to change the whole lot by hand with no machine. "It is not going to make any difference to people."