‘Dirty Irish’ turn out to be squeaky clean about our hands

DON’T ever worry again about the hygiene implications of shaking hands with your fellow Irish man or woman again.

In spite of our ‘Dirty Irish’ label and our international reputation as a rather happy-go-lucky lot, it has emerged that we Irish are pretty obsessive.

We like to wash our hands. We like to wash our hands a lot.

A survey by Dyson shows that a commendable 86% of people in Ireland always wash their hands after using the bathroom.

And when it comes to the practice of wiping toilet seats before sitting down, we’re world leaders, as 85% won’t sit on the loo without giving it the once over.

A third of those questioned also said they cover their hands before touching the flush lever on the toilet, with one in five people admitting to using their foot.

Three quarters of all nationalities say they wash their hands after using the toilet — but the Dutch, Russians, Spanish and Belgians are the most laxidasical of all those questioned — with more of these country’s citizens admitting to skipping the sink.

The research was published to coincide with World Toilet Day, a day when policy makers were hoping to raise awareness of the health implications for the 2.5 billion people in the developing world who don’t have access to a toilet.

A spokesman for the Plan International charity said that while toilets are often the source of much humour in the Western world, every year 1.5 million children die of sanitation-related illnesses around the world.

“That’s 171 children dying every hour of every day, 365 days of every year just because they don’t have access to decent sanitation,” the charity’s spokesperson said.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared this year the International Year of Sanitation to raise awareness of this crisis.

It hopes to encourage progress towards reaching the Millennium development goals by halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation by the year 2015.