A Christmas holiday spending spree in Dublin was tonight being attributed to "mattress money".
Estimates were that the cash flow bonanza ahead of the seasonal break was 14 per cent - or £140 million - up on last year's figure, and continuing during the early stages of the New Year sales.
And it was believed the phenomenon was down to efforts being made by people holding illicitly-held money, stored away from the gaze of the taxman under mattresses or at other locations in their homes over a period of years, in time for the January 1st currency switch from the punt to the euro.
Before the start of the Christmas period, many Dublin traders had anticipated little or no rise on last year's returns, mainly because of persistent indications of a downturn on the economic front.
In fact just the opposite appears to have happened. With the start of the sales, in excess of £1.5 billion was reckoned to have been spent in the last three weeks.
And officials at the Central Bank confirmed that the signs were that people were offloading money they had been storing at home, for up to decades in some cases.
One said: "The money has to be coming from somewhere, and the probability is that the cash had been stashed away for years - and now has to be spent in buying small items that prompt no questions."
PA