Report says no record of RTÉ board approving Toy Show musical
Toy Show: The Musical closed after just a month's worth of performances in December 2022. File Picture.
RTÉ’s board provided no written approval for the staging of a musical based on the Late Late Toy Show, which subsequently made a €2.2m loss, a long-awaited report is expected to say.
The report into the genesis of the musical, by consultants Grant Thornton, is expected to be published on Thursday morning.
The understands it will find that RTÉ’s board did not officially approve the show, the losses from which emerged during the fallout from a scandal involving hidden payments to former RTÉ presenter Ryan Tubridy last summer.
In the wake of clarification that the musical had generated large-scale losses RTÉ’s former director of strategy Rory Coveney, one of the principals behind its creation, resigned from the broadcaster last July after more than a decade in his role.
However, several of RTÉ’s current board members were in place at the time the musical was first greenlit in 2022, with calls expected to be made for their resignations in light of the Grant Thornton report’s findings.
A spokesperson for Media Minister Catherine Martin confirmed that she has received the report, which was first due to be published last year before experiencing several delays.
The RTÉ board meanwhile acknowledged in a statement that “the Grant Thornton Report into Toy Show The Musical, commissioned by the Audit and Risk Committee of the RTÉ Board, is now complete”.
“The report has been furnished to the ARC and the RTÉ Board, and also subsequently to the Minister. The Report will be published as soon as possible,” they said.
Meanwhile, speaking on Wednesday afternoon, Minister Martin said that the Grant Thornton report had been delayed due to “due process”.
Asked if there are more questions to be answered by top RTÉ staff in light of the report’s findings and if some may need to consider their positions, Ms Martin said: “It’s quite a detailed report and I’m going through that now and as I said, I won’t comment on it until RTÉ publish their own report.”
She added that she expects a further report, by solicitors McCann Fitzgerald into RTÉ’s voluntary redundancy schemes dating from 2017 and 2021, to be delivered in the coming weeks.
The musical itself closed after just a month’s worth of performances from December 2022.
The ill-fated venture, which had been beset with problems including cancellations due to illness and low ticket sales, had initially been projected to bring in revenue of roughly €4.1m.
That assumed a sell-out for its entire run of 54 shows, with a total audience of 107,000 at Dublin’s Convention Centre.
In the end, just 27 live shows were held, with ticket sales of 20,262. Only 11,044 of those tickets were actually sold, the rest being complimentary tickets or competition/giveaway prizes.
Revenue of just €496,000 was recorded, €2.7m less than had been projected.
