Tánaiste launches childhood memoir of ex-hospital chairman Henry Murdoch

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore last night launched a travel book and childhood memoir by the well-known legal author and former chairman of the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Henry Murdoch.

Mr Murdoch said all royalties from the books, Remembering Killaloe and My Killaloe, will go to the hospital where he found himself a patient recently after he was struck by Bell's palsy, which paralysed the upper left side of his face.

Mr Murdoch's book My Killaloe is a personal tour of 100 places of interest in Killaloe and Ballina. It is a companion volume to Mr Murdoch's memoir Remembering Killaloe, about his childhood growing up in the Co Clare town.

Mr Murdoch, who is the brother of the late Bill Murdoch, the former business editor of The Irish Times, was admitted to the hospital in March last year.

"At 75 years of age I had just returned from a regular skiing trip in Austria at 10,000 feet and minus 15 centigrade when I was hit, out of the blue, by pneumonia, meningitis and Bell's palsy," he said.

Mr Mudoch retired as chairman of the hospital at the end of 2013 after 17 years.