Katherine Drohan and Jane Murphy
WHILE MOST of the fall-out from last week’s media committee hearings into the antics at RTÉ concerned golden handshakes for former executives, one aspect of payouts slipped under the radar.
As the discussion dealt with the rather generous financial culture at Montrose for full-time staff, Blueshirt senator Micheál Carrigy raised the issue of the two producers of the doomed Toy Show The Musical (TSTM) – Jane Murphy and Katherine Drohan.
Despite their central role in the evolution of the expensive disaster, they were not named in the Grant Thornton report into the debacle. This seems to relate to their “junior” status, although it turns out that their reward was at the senior level.
At the hearing, Carrigy asked how much the two gals had been paid for their work on TSTM, with RTÉ DG Kevin Bakhurst saying: “As I understand it – and I will look into it – the producers were seconded from other parts of RTÉ, so they would not necessarily have been paid.”
The FG senator was less than convinced, suggesting they had been paid extra over a near three-year period, at which point Bakhurst promised to write to the committee with the details.
Goldhawk can reveal that Murphy and Drohan were paid separately for their work on TSTM, through a subsidiary called RTÉ Commercial Enterprises, which funded the show. Even more impressively, the two RTÉ employees have made it on to the Revenue’s list of lucky recipients of the Artists’ Exemption from tax, so clearly not everyone lost out on the musical flop.
