A chara, - I missed the start of Marian Finucane's recent programme on the suggested commemorative stamp to honour the memory of St Colmcille, who died 1400 years ago in 597AD.
I would like to endorse the case for issuing a stamp and would like to protest at the rather summary dismissal by the An Post spokesman, who stated that a Colmcille stamp would not be a viable commercial proposition - not so it seems for Her Majesty's Royal Mail, which is issuing a commemorative stamp to honour Colmcille and his monastic settlement in Iona.
I am appalled that one of our State Departments would fail to honour the memory of Ireland's most illustrious Donegal born saint on the basics of commercial viability. They have rightly honoured many Irish artists down the years - J. B. Yeats, Louis le Brocquy to name but two - but I am sure that in any artistic league table, Colmcille would merit commemoration for his artistic skill, in the compilation in his own hand of the Cathach, Ireland's oldest surviving manuscript. One of the world's most beautiful illuminated books, The Book of Kells, was reputedly written in Colmcille's monastery in Iona and later taken to his monastery at Kells. Some scholars suggest he may have been one of the scribes. The Book of Durrow from the 8th century is also associated with Colmcille.
Surely sales of commemorative stamps in Ireland and to the Irish diaspora in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia would ensure commercial viability to An Post - not renowned down the years I must say, for its husbandry of taxpayers money.
I suggest that our Donegal TDs make serious representations to the Government, even at this late hour. Colmcille in this, the 1,400th anniversary of his death, should merit not one but four stamps over the year. One of St Colmcille, one of the Cathach, one of the Book of Kells and one of his birthplace in Gartan. Le meas.
Cathach Books,
Duke Street,
Dublin 2.