Honohan: ‘We don’t have it as bad as King James II did’

With the recession over and an offer of as much money as he could wish for, things appear to be looking up for Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan.

The modern-day keeper of Irish finances was in Limerick yesterday and paid a flying visit to King John’s Castle, the last centre in Ireland where native coinage was struck before Free State coinage was introduced in 1928.

Prof Honohan was promised riches as the city offered to reopen its mint and strike as many coins as he needed to help the country towards recovery.

There were similarities in the exchange to the last time coins were struck in Limerick. On that occasion, 323 years ago, the hard-pressed King James II turned to minting coins from scrap metal to pay his subjects for helping him try to regain sovereignty over his dominions.

The good people at Shannon Heritage, which runs the medieval castle that has been renovated as a visitor attraction at a cost of €5.7m, even offered up a charter with a promise to reopen the mint. Prof Honohan expressed his gratitude but made it clear that neither the Central Bank nor the nation has it quite as bad as King James II did.

He said that “while we are grateful of the offer, I do not think we will need to call on your currency production services for some time”.

“I am very happy to visit Limerick and King John’s Castle and very impressed with the long association it has with currency production!. We are obviously only novices in the Central Bank in comparison.”

The cheeky offer was made by Rose Hynes, chairman designate of the new Shannon Group plc, which will run Shannon Heritage.

“The last time a coin was minted here, it was down to a serious shortfall in finances,” she said.

“It was a promissory note of the day and pretty much said: ‘Allow us to pay you with coins minted from scrap metal and we will exchange it for gold in due course when we come back into money.’

“We just thought it prudent to show Governor Honohan today that we are ready to go into money production again here in Limerick if we are needed. We started producing money here in the castle over 800 years ago — long before the Central Bank did.”