Toy Show musical a 'disaster before it even started', says PAC chair

A Grant Thornton report into the development of the musical is expected to be published on Thursday. Picture: Andres Poveda

The chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said the staging of the Late Late Toy Show musical was a "disaster before it even started". 

It comes as it was revealed the RTÉ board did not officially approve the show.

A Grant Thornton report into the development of the musical is expected to be published later on Thursday after it emerged during the fall-out of the Ryan Tubridy hidden payment scandal that it made a loss of €2.2m. 

It then led to the resignation of RTÉ's former director of strategy Rory Coveney in July after being in the role for over a decade. He was one of the principals behind its creation. 

Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley said that although he has not seen the report so far, the leaks from the past 24 hours "clearly underline the failure of corporate governance in RTÉ" as well as the "huge lack of accountability". 

"We all understand that it is a commercial semi-state company. It has to engage in commercial ventures," Mr Stanley told RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Thursday.

"This was a disaster before it even started, from what has been leaked so far, the fact that there was no obligation to get board approval before they went ahead and booked venues and got involved and had the project up and running.

"I think that the business case here, if it ever existed, must have been on the back of a very small envelope," he said. 

Brian Stanley. Picture: Oireachtas TV

He added: "The whole enterprise seems to be a complete fiasco right from the word go. It's an appalling situation."

Mr Stanley said the leaks from the report "show us what type of regime operated at the top of RTÉ". 

"It is clear that the executive team that was there was completely failing in its duties," he said.

"It is clear that there was a lack of accountability to the appointed board, which is now being headed by Siún Ní Raghallaigh. It is clear that the flow of information was not there, there was no reporting structures."

He also said that for an organisation and corporate entity to "engage in such an enterprise without having proper market research, without having some proper business case put together, and to engage in that from the word go, just shows and crystalises the complete failures in accountability and governance."