"Ireland of the welcomes" may have just given the cold shoulder to one of its newest neighbours. A special stamp issued by An Post to commemorate EU enlargement appears to incorrectly identify the island of Crete as Cyprus, writes Carl O'Brien
Sharp-eyed philatelists and stamp collectors were quick to note that the distinctive shape of Cyprus seemed absent from the Mediterranean when the stamps were issued in recent days.
"I suspect it's egg on the face time," said Mr Peter Geoffroy of Cathedral Stamps, Dublin's largest stamp shop.
"It looks like the wrong shape. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it got confused somewhere along the line and no one spotted it in time."
However, An Post, which has printed more than 300,000 copies of the stamp, was last night insisting there was no mistake. "What appears to be Crete is in fact Cyprus," the spokesman said.
"The map has been tweaked and Cyprus did not fit into the perspective, so we had to move it. I suppose there was some cartographer's licence involved. The map is only a representation of what the new Europe should look like. One could look at it and say this is clearly an error and is part of Greece, but it is not intended to be a map of Europe."
However, stamp-collecting experts say that even if there is an error, it is unlikely the 65c stamps will prove to be valuable collectors' items because of the extensive print-run.
"Mistakes like this tend to happen in perhaps one out of every 20 stamps or so. These will have a curiosity value, but they won't be scarce. You could go into your local post office or the GPO and buy a sheet of them, for instance," said Mr Geoffroy.
An Post, while not conceding there was a mistake, said the area in question was barely noticeable. "In any case, we're talking about a very small area, probably .45 mm. It's a tiny area and the skill was in trying to create an adequate representation of Europe, in an area that measures 40.6mm x 29.8mm."
And what of international reaction to the stamps? "We won't be selling them in Crete, these are for the people of Ireland," the spokesman added.