Ireland

Ireland stamps available online at Io Collezionista. The country has been a member of the European Union since January 1973 and kept close ties with the United Kingdom until 1949, the year the republic was proclaimed and it left the Commonwealth. Among the stamps in this category are those dedicated to the patron saint, Saint Patrick, a bishop and monk who lived between the 4th and 5th centuries AD, whose day of death, 17 March, is still a national holiday. It celebrates the arrival and spread of the Christian faith on the island through the work of the saint, who was to all effects the first evangelist of Ireland. Io Collezionista also offers a franking marking the bicentenary of the birth of Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 to 25 February 1852), a distinguished figure in the country's literary history and the author of many poems, among them The Last Rose of Summer, and ballads.