Ireland had predecimal coinage too, and the first time we visited ('68 honeymoon) they would take English coins too, but we kept a few Irish coins, as souvenirs. Next time (silver wedding celebrated with a trip to the Willie Clancy festival) it was punts and decimal coinage, not interchangeable. Though I think some shops took pounds too. We decided we'd be coming again so kept our spare notes. We did go again, but not till '08 and by then you couldn't change punts to Euros in the little local banks. Drat. For a while we hung onto the Euros, but when the Greek crisis blew up I gave them to my daughter to use before that system changed too.