20 Euro Cents 1st map

Ireland was among the founding wave of eurozone members, but its adoption of the single currency carried particular political weight — the punt had been pegged to sterling for decades before breaking free in 1979, and replacing it entirely meant severing the last symbolic monetary link to Britain. The "1st map" reverse, used across all eurozone issues through 2006, depicted only the fifteen EU members at the time, omitting the ten accession states that joined in May 2004 — which is precisely why the design was retired.