5 Pounds Bank of Ireland

The Bank of Ireland's late-series £5 notes issued under P#70 belong to the final years before the Republic's banknote design underwent a complete overhaul ahead of the euro transition process. These circulated heavily — the £5 was a workhorse denomination in Ireland through the early 1990s — and surviving uncirculated examples are notably harder to find than the higher denominations from the same family, which saw less daily handling.

The watermark was the primary security feature at a time when the Irish banking authorities had not yet adopted the polymer or foil strip technologies being introduced elsewhere in Europe. A deliberate institutional conservatism.