50 Pounds

Robert Ballagh — the Dublin artist better known for paintings and stage set design — brought an unusual sensibility to this series, giving Irish banknotes of the period a graphic boldness that set them apart from the engraved convention still dominant across European central banks at the time. The Central Bank printed the series in-house at its Dame Street facility, one of the relatively few European issuing authorities to manage full production internally.

This denomination survived just long enough for two signature combinations, with the Hurley pairing appearing only in the final 2001 date — the last year of Irish pound production before euro notes superseded the currency entirely in January 2002.