A €10 silver coin being offered for sale to the public by the Central Bank contains an embarrassing error.

The special commemorative coin honours the writer James Joyce and it features his portrait on its face.

But the coin's face also misquotes a famous line from his masterwork Ulysses, inserting a word that is not in the original text.

The Central Bank has limited the minting of the coin to a maximum 10,000 units.

It is on sale at the bank's Dame Street headquarters in Dublin from today for €46.

The coin was launched at a private event at Newman House, St Stephen's Green, Joyce's alma mater when he was a student at University College Dublin there.

At the launch, the Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan said: "The coin's design, combining portrait and concept in an original manner, reflects Joyce's standing as one of the leading figures in the modernist movement."

The erroneous lines on the front on the coin are taken from the beginning of chapter three of Ulysses, where Stephen Dedalus walks alone along Sandymount Strand reflecting.

Joyce wrote: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read."

However, on the Central Bank coin the surplus word "that" is inserted into the second sentence.

No one from the Central Bank was available for comment.