AN original and rare copy of the Proclamation recovered from Dublin’s General Post Office (GPO) in 1916 could fetch up to £115,000 at an Irish auction.
The document is one of 25 surviving copies of the Proclamation and is being sold on the open market for the first time.
It will be auctioned by Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers at the O'Connell Suite, Gresham Hotel, Dublin, on Saturday, April 23, to coincide with the centenary commemorations of the Easter Rising.
The copy of the Proclamation is expected to be sold for around £75,000-£115,000 (€100,000-€150,000), less than another copy that sold last month at Sotheby's in London in for £305,000.
GPO medical officer Jim Ryan, one of the founding members of the Irish Volunteers, is responsible for saving the document.
As one of the last people to leave the GPO along with the injured James Connolly in 1916, he removed the document from the wall prior to surrender.
He kept it until his death in 1970, after which it passed through his family, who eventually sold it to a private collector for an undisclosed sum.
Mr Ryan, a Co. Wexford native, was born in 1891 and won a scholarship in 1911 to study medicine at University College Dublin (UCD).
After the Rising he was arrested by British officers and brought to England but was released several months later and returned to Dublin.
He became a TD for Wexford and was a founding member of Fianna Fáil.
