The anonymous buyer who paid €700,000 for Padraig Pearse's 1916 surrender note should make it available to the State Archives, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said today.
Mr Cowen told the Dail that he was unable to say if the Government had bid for the document at James Adam salesrooms in Dublin last night.
He said: "I only heard this morning that this historic document was sold for €700,000 yesterday.
"I can only hope that the buyer would be a person or institution who would be able perhaps to make it available for our own archives or artefacts for the future.
"I don't know who it is. It was a private auction and it was anonymously purchased."
Mr Cowen said he wasn't in a position to say if the state had bid for the letter.
"I'm not aware of that. You'll have to ask others," he added.
The Pearse document, dated April 30th, 1916 had a guide price of about €80,000.
Several state organisations had viewed the historic letter, which was penned by the republican icon from his prison cell days before his execution by firing squad after the ill-fated Easter Rising.
The letter had been stored carefully by a private family for the past 80 years since a Capuchin priest, Fr Columbus, collected it from Pearse's cell in Dublin's Arbour Hill Prison.
The letter attracted interest from overseas, including American collectors, when it was displayed in a Bond Street auction room in London and in Belfast over the past few weeks.
An original copy of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic recently went for a record €390,000 at the same Adam salesrooms in Dublin's St Stephen's Green.
Pearse wrote the note before he was executed with 14 others captured in the battle to overthrow English rule.
PA