 The Irish overprinted stamps came , as supplied from the printers in London , with a watermark of the Royal Cypher of George V. The first Irish watermark was a stylised design of the two overlapping letters ' s ' and ' e ' making an ' se ' watermark representing the name of the country Saorstát Éireann . This watermark was discontinued around 1940 when the country 's name changed to Éire ( Ireland ) ; it was replaced with e watermark paper to represent Éire . Stamps of the period may have the watermark in any of several states of inversion and rotation attributable to the way the paper was fed into the printing machines . 
