Moya Doherty said 'no objections' raised by board to RTÉ's Toy Show musical

Former RTÉ chairwoman Moya Doherty told a consultant investigating the RTÉ musical that approval for the event had been given by the board as 'no objections' had been raised. Picture: PA

Former RTÉ chairwoman Moya Doherty told a consultant investigating the genesis of flop show Toy Show: The Musical that approval for the event had been given by the board as “no objections” had been raised.

Ahead of RTÉ’s latest appearance before the Oireachtas media committee on Wednesday, a deanonymised version of the Grant Thornton report into the musical, which posted a €2.3m loss after its month-long run in December 2022, shows that the majority of the broadcaster’s board believed approval for the musical should have been voted upon before it came to fruition.

Some 20 of the 26 people interviewed by Grant Thornton for the purpose of that report, finally published after multiple delays late last month, subsequently gave consent for their identity to be revealed.

They include Ms Doherty, the former chairwoman and co-founder of Riverdance, former RTÉ director of strategy Rory Coveney, and several current board members including Daire Hickey, Susan Ahern, PJ Matthews, and audit and risk committee chairwoman Anne O’Leary.

The report was first anonymised by its compiler and Grant Thornton partner Paul Jacobs on foot of the “requirements of natural justice”.

It now transpires that a board member who was recorded in the report as believing that no formal approval was generally required for projects where a “consensus was reached” was the former chairwoman, Ms Doherty.

Ms Doherty said that “no objections” had been raised at board level regarding the €2.7m budgeted musical.

“The practice at board meetings was to reach consensus if possible and if a consensus was reached no formal vote was taken,” she told Grant Thornton.

Approval process

However, several of the same board members, including Mr Hickey and former member Connor Murphy, did agree that “implicit” approval had been given by the board, despite the lack of an official vote.

The report now also shows that it was Ms Doherty who suggested that a meeting of board and executive members in March 2022 should not be briefed in advance regarding the musical, and who subsequently told Grant Thornton that there was “no particular reason” why that briefing material was not given.