Caroline Murphy and the Murphy Group - one woman's construction empire

She’s the heiress to a family fortune, a trade unionist and gay rights campaigner. And just a couple of weeks ago she turned her back on the family business in a dispute over her attempts to turn Murphy Group and its 3,500 employees into a workers’ co-op. As Caroline Murphy prepares to hand workers her £40m in shares, Michael Clifford reports.

CAROLINE Murphy moved with grace and ease among the Murphy men at her father’s funeral. It was May 2009, and all had descended on John Murphy’s native Cahirciveen in Co Kerry to pay their last respects to a man who was known to thousands as simply, “The Boss”.

He had left south Kerry an illiterate, penniless teenager, and spawned a construction empire conservatively worth over €350 million.