100 Pounds

Robert Ballagh designed this note — a somewhat unusual choice, given that he was primarily known as a painter and printmaker with an explicitly political edge, not a conventional banknote artist. His involvement reflected a deliberate push by the Central Bank in the 1970s and 1980s to commission Irish artists rather than default to established security printers' in-house design teams.

By 1996, the Irish pound was already living on borrowed time. The euro transition was less than six years away, and high-denomination notes like this one saw relatively limited everyday handling — mostly institutional and banking use. Survivors in genuinely circulated condition are proportionally rarer than lower values from the same series.