Leitrim County Council has been urged to bid for 1916 patriot Seán MacDiarmada's last letter from his death-cell. The letter is being auctioned at a sale of historical documents on April 12th at the James Adam salerooms in Dublin.
A motion that the council is to seek to buy the letter - expected to fetch up to €20,000 - was passed at a meeting earlier this week.
Cllr Michael Colreavy said it would be "a disgrace" if the letter was allowed to fall into private hands. He wanted it purchased for the people of Leitrim because MacDiarmada, from Kinlough, was one of the county's greatest heroes.
MacDiarmada wrote the letter in his cell in Kilmainham jail on May 11th, 1916, the day before his execution for his part in the Easter Rising.
It was written to the family of Edward Daly, a commandant in the Irish Volunteers, who was executed a few days earlier.
He wrote: "I have been sentenced to a soldier's death to be shot tomorrow morning. I have nothing to say about this only that I look on it as part of the day's work." There is a replica of the letter in the national library.
The original was offered for auction by the family of an unnamed prominent Donegal member of Fine Gael who died some years ago.
Leitrim County Council's Fine Gael chairman Gerry Reynolds said: "A big issue now will be where will the council get the money. It doesn't have those kind of funds sitting on deposit."