Central Bank of Ireland, Currency Centre Central Bank of Ireland

The Central Bank of Ireland printed banknotes at its Currency Centre in Sandyford, on the southern edge of Dublin. Printing stopped in 2019, and Ireland now sources its share of euro banknotes from other Eurosystem works.

A small plant with two euro letters

The Currency Centre opened in the late 1970s and printed Irish pound notes until the changeover. It went on to print part of the first euro series under the letter K and part of the Europa series under the letter T, control number 6.

The plant was always modest in scale — a few dozen staff in the print works — and its annual allocation was correspondingly small. That is precisely what made the letters interesting to collectors: the number of notes carrying them is far lower than for the large continental plants.

Why printing ended

The Central Bank announced in 2018 that it intended to stop printing and to buy its allocation within the euro area instead, in line with decisions already taken by several other national central banks. Production wound down through the following year. The Bank was explicit that the change affected only banknote manufacturing: Irish euro coin production and the supply of cash to the Irish cash cycle were unaffected.

Reading the code on a note

An Irish-printed note is identified by the production code. First-series notes from Sandyford begin that code with K; Europa-series notes begin it with T, which should not be confused with the first-series letter T used by the Belgian works. The reassignment of letters between the two series is explained in printing offices and printer codes.