Philip Hamell, Chairperson of the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland, said that while welcoming the high level of general awareness among the public, the Board particularly wants to reach people who have low awareness of the euro.

"We have fifteen months before euro cash comes into circulation on 1 January 2002. Our next task is to help people build a scale of values for themselves in euro, and particularly to tell them that a pound is worth one euro and 27 cents. We will be doing that through our forthcoming public relations and advertising campaign, which will focus on reaching the groups identified in our survey as most at risk of low awareness: older people, people on low incomes and people based in the home.

As well as that, we will continue to work with our Consultative Panel of organisations representing people at risk of low awareness and people with special needs. Also, we have more than doubled the funding for our Programme of grants for activities by Non-Governmental Organisations to promote awareness of the euro: applications for the coming year's Programme will be accepted up to 6 October 2000. We will be intensifying our efforts over the next fifteen months to ensure that everyone has access to information about the euro."

The Euro Changeover Board also today published its 1999/2000 annual report, which shows that over the past year the Board successfully built on the solid foundations laid down in its first year. "Our biggest production was the Plan we published in April to facilitate a smooth changeover to euro cash from 1 January 2002", Mr Hamell said. "Legal tender status will be withdrawn from the Irish pound at midnight on Saturday 9 February 2002, ending the period during which euro notes and coins and Irish notes and coins will be in circulation together. During the summer, we sent a summary of the Plan to every household in the country", he said.

During the year under review the Board made its information materials widely available at post offices, social welfare offices, centres for older people, Citizens Information Centres and Money Advice and Budgeting Centres, as well as providing special materials for people with literacy difficulties in co-operation with the National Adult Literacy Agency and the City of Dublin VEC. The Board also expanded its Consultative Panel of organisations representing people likely to have special needs in the changeover to the euro, and further developed its links with the education sector, launching a new interactive website for schools, circulating an information pack to primary and post-primary schools, and co-operating with the Department of Education and Science in the preparation of subject guides on the euro for distribution in the current school year.

Mr Hamell expressed the Board's thanks to all who have helped in its activities to date and said the Board looks forward to their continuing co-operation in the period from now to the end of the changeover.