Bringing currency in
Where the cooperative's euro comes from
The cooperative issues no currency. Every euro it spends on behalf of a member arrived from outside: carried home by a resident, changed by a visitor, or earned by an exporting cooperative and paid into the common pool.
A resident returning from abroad
For wages from a posting, a fee for work done for a foreign institution, an inheritance or a gift from relatives, the member declares the sum at entry, shows where it came from, and pays it in at any teller. It stands to their own account in euro from that moment.
The source is shown because the cooperative holds an Irish payment licence, and Irish law obliges it to establish the origin of what it takes in. A sum a member cannot account for is refused at the teller, and the refusal is recorded.
A visitor
Lodging, transport, water and communication are furnished to visitors on the same terms as to residents, so little money is needed. The remainder is minor discretionary goods, and for those a visitor receives a visitor's allocation of residual units against the currency paid in.
The rate is the reference rate of the day. Any sum left unspent is returned on departure in the currency brought, at the reference rate of the day of return, with no charge either way.
The export pool
An exporting cooperative sells abroad on terms fixed by the plan, and its foreign receipts come here. Those receipts form the pool that pays for every purchase made against residual units, and the size of the pool limits what members can obtain in a period.
The National Planning Congress fixes the share of receipts that stays available to members, the remainder funding the imports the plan itself requires. The Audit Office audits the pool annually in physical terms and in euro, and publishes the audit in full.
| Currency | Taken as | Charge | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Euro | Cash or transfer | None | Held as it arrives |
| Danish krone, Swedish krona, Norwegian krone | Cash or transfer | None | Converted at the reference rate on the day it clears |
| Polish zloty, Czech koruna, Hungarian forint, Romanian leu, Bulgarian lev | Cash or transfer | None | Converted at the reference rate on the day it clears |
| Pound sterling, US dollar, Swiss franc, Japanese yen | Transfer preferred | None | Cash above 1,000 EUR equivalent needs three days and a source document |
| Other currencies | Enquire in advance | - | The cooperative's bank in Dublin must be able to accept it |
What a balance here is, under each law
Under Irish law it is a payment account balance belonging to the member, safeguarded in a segregated account, and payable back to the member on demand.
Under the law of the Republic it is no money at all. It cannot be pledged, cannot be lent, cannot pass to another person, and buys nothing the plan supplies. A balance left by a member who dies returns to the pool.
What the cooperative refuses to take
Cash a member cannot account for. Sums sent by a third party who is no relative of the member. Any sum from a person or an entity on the lists an Irish payment institution has to screen against. Deposits made in a pattern that suggests one large sum broken into small ones.
Every refusal is recorded, and reported where Irish law requires a report. A member who considers a refusal wrong may ask the board to review it, and afterwards may approach the ombudsman in Ireland or the Defender of Rights here, as the complaints page sets out.