Archive - Wash day blues for South-Eastern Health Board (1974)

Getting the washing done is presenting the South Eastern Health Board with an enormous headache.

At present, the cost of the total laundry operation is £140,000 and the annual throughput is about 4 million articles. And there are countless problems.

A special report commissioned from the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards shows that in only seven of the region’s 27 hospital laundries is the standard of wash satisfactory.

In 11 of the laundries, the standard achieved is unsatisfactory and of these, four are so unsatisfactory as to be completely unacceptable.

In the report, emphasis is placed on the unreliability of operation of many of the laundries due to the advanced age of the machinery, poor operating technique and the lack of a preventative maintenance. The average age of the 129 machines in the region is almost 25 years. No laundry has a machine less than 15 years and six laundries have machines whose average age is nearly 30 years.

In commercial use, such machines are regarded as having a useful economic life of seven to 10 years.

Railway History

This year’s Railway Cup hurling final was a history-making affair in Croke Park. Apart from the fact that the winners, Leinster, made it four in a row of titles, for the first time it also saw individual honours for some Kilkennymen.

Eddie Keher, architect of a fine Kilkenny win, won his seventh Railway Cup medal - a record for the province. Phil Larkin also added a bit to the history books adding to the father-son partnership of winners as he won his second medal. His father holds three Cup medals.

While the game was by no means a bundle of excitement - Leinster beat Munster by 2-15 to 1-11 - Kilkenny can at least be pleased. No fewer than eight Noresiders donned the green jersey of the winners.

President for Graig'

Graignamanagh will be host to a number of distinguished guests when the parish celebrates the official commencement of a major restoration and conservation plan for the 13th Century Cistercian Abbey, now in use as the parish church.

President Childers and the Taoiseach Mr Cosgrave will attend mass in the Abbey.