It was dubbed D-Day, the day Ireland woke up to a new currency and abandoned £.s.d., a monetary system that had “debauched generations of school children”, according to Labour’s Justin Keating. Fifty years ago, a cold and wet Monday, February 15, 1971, “the new money”, as decimal currency was known, came into circulation, with 100p to the pound, instead of 240d or 20 shillings. The date was picked so that Ireland could make this leap in tandem with our British neighbours. The transition from old to new had been championed by Minister for Finance Charlie Haughey, while two of its most strident critics were in Fine Gael.