Bank Notes (Ireland) Act 1920

The Bank Notes Act 1920 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which removed any obligation for a bank of issue in Ireland to pay, on demand, any of its notes bearing a date before 4 August 1920, except at the bank's head office in Ireland.

Background

Since 1828, under the Bank Notes (Ireland) Act, 1828, banks in Ireland were obliged to cover any redemptions of pound sterling banknotes they had issued at any branch. This legally required individual branches to physically hold excessive amounts of legal tender to cover any redemption. In 1920, six Irish banks wrote to the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland asking to be relieved of this obligation. They felt the requirement was excessive in view of the greater number of branches in 1920 and the improvements in communications, compared to 1828.
The Act provided that any Irish sterling banknotes issued by the banks were only required to be redeemed for legal tender at the individual bank's head office or at another branch the bank designated for this purpose.

Repeals

The act was repealed in its entirety in the Irish Free State by the Currency Act, 1927. Section 2 of the Bank Notes Act, which repealed the obligation for banknotes to be redeemed at the branch where they were issued, was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1927 but the rest of the act remains in force in the United Kingdom.