‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ creator and wife share near €1m in dividends

Brendan O'Carroll continues to profit from his hugely successful Mrs Brown's Boys show with recently filed accounts showing the comedian and his wife, actress Jennifer Givney shared a near €1 million payout last year.

Accounts filed for Mrs Browns Boys Limited show the couple earned €863,760 in dividends in the 12 months to the end of 2016. This follows a €2.04 million payout a year earlier.

The payout came even as the company recorded a €773,486 loss last year as against a €2.74 million profit in 2015. The loss meant that accumulated profits fell from €1.66 million to just €21,217.

Accounts for a subsidiary, BOC Productions Ltd show it had cash of €106,259 at the end of December 2016, even though the shareholders' deficit rose to €549,211.

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The Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas special was the most-watched television programme in Ireland this Christmas with an average of 695,000 people tuning to see it on RTÉ One, equivalent to 42 per cent of all Irish households.

The popularity of the comedy with Irish viewers mirrors its success in the UK, where it pulled in 6.8 million viewers to BBC One, making it second in the UK ratings only to the Queen's Christmas Message.

Mrs Brown's Boy has made its creator a multi-millionaire and also enriched other cast members, three of whom reportedly put more than £2 million into companies in Mauritius as part of a tax avoidance scheme.

Patrick Houlihan and Martin and Fiona Delany (Mr O'Caroll's daughter) took funds received from the production company owned by the actor and transferred them overseas, according to claims contained in the recent Paradise Papers Leak. Neither Mr O'Carroll or his wife were implicated in the scheme, however.