Meter problems with millennium coin

A millennium £1 coin was introduced by the Central Bank yesterday amid fears that it, along with the recent 1999 £1 coins, may not be recognised by Dublin Corporation's parking meters and some vending machines. Unfortunately for motorists faced with ever-vigilant clampers and increasing city-centre traffic restrictions, the parking meter/ coin debate is unlikely to be resolved in time for the Christmas shopping rush.

Yesterday morning stickers were fixed to all the meters advising motorists not to try to use 1999 £1 coins.

Now fears have been expressed over whether the new millennium coins, five million of which are to be issued in January 2000, will have the same problem.

The corporation says it became aware only on Thursday last of problems its parking meters were encountering with the 1999 pound coins, 8.2 million of which were introduced into circulation last month.

A spokesman said Dublin Corporation was taking the problem very seriously. It has sent 70 pound coins - some 1999, some earlier - to the French manufacturers of the parking machines for testing, but says it had not been told a new millennium coin would be coming into circulation soon.

"If it is possible to find a calibration that would allow the machines accept both the 1999 and earlier coins, we would have to take out all the coin slots in our meters and have them adjusted.

"But now we are learning - through the media - that we may have another coin to deal with in January," said the spokesman.

"This makes the problem much more difficult: the new coin, too, should be taken into account, but if the `window of recognition' is too wide, any old toy counters might work.

"You can draw your own conclusions about how happy we are about this," he added.

The bank says it has no plans to test the millennium £1 coin which it displayed to the media yesterday on Dublin's parking meters.

It maintains that the new coin is made to the same specification as all other £1 coins.

If there was a problem it was not with the £1 coins, a spokesman said.

When The Irish Times pointed out that the 1999 coins, which the spokesman claimed are made to the same specification as other coins, actually do not work, and that when they were introduced many traders were deeply suspicious of them, the spokesman said: "Our answer is that the specification is the same."

That the Central Bank was not allowing the first new coins to be taken away yesterday ruled out experimentation with meters and vending machines.

The solution may lie in the specification itself which covers weight, dimensions, metal content and design. The "tolerance level" for the metal content is 75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel, according to the bank. However, it acknowledges that, in fact, the specification does allow for small fluctuations, of up to two percentage points in that ratio.

In order to ensure that vending machines work, the bank normally sends out its specification to vending machine operators such as Dublin Corporation which calibrate their machines accordingly.

The Central Bank has been in touch with the corporation and according to the bank officials is "working with them on this".

However, the corporation says it has anecdotal evidence that some commercial vending machines are experiencing the same problem, leading it to suspect that the coin rather than the machine is at fault.