Spin doctor in need of his own medicine

WHEN Joe Murray sat down for a drink in Hynes's pub on Baggot Street, Dublin with Jim Milton on Monday night he had just finished what must have been the most trying day of his 23 years in public relations.

Since early that morning copies of The Irish Times had been arriving on clients' desks across the country carrying a front page story on a tax settlement made in 1992 by Murray, Milton and the third director of their successful PR firm, Terence Horgan.

The three men had paid the Revenue Commissioners £1 million through a Panamanian company to settle tax liabilities on offshore payments received from various clients between 1978 and 1990.

The damage to the firm's reputation for smooth professionalism was the first casualty. Of much greater concern was the prospect of collateral damage to the firm's list of blue chip clients, including Dr Tony O'Reilly.

This elite client list was the fruit of hard work since Joe Murray, a former business editor with the Irish Press and the Sunday Independent, set up Murray Consultants in 1974.

Murray, then 29, had worked briefly with Michael O'Reilly Associates before deciding to strike out on his own. He established the company backing of Horgan, a 37 year old accountant.

Both men had connections with the right wing Catholic organisation Opus Dei when they were at UCD. They were joined in the new consultancy by Jim, Milton, a former editor of Business and Finance magazine, also 29.

They decided to concentrate on corporate public relations and advising business on all as pects of communication, from producing annual reports to handling the media during crises. It was in the area of "crisis PR" that they were, to excel. When the term spin doctor" entered the language in the 1980s it was quickly applied to Murray and Milton.

One of the first businessmen to see the advantage of the new PR service was Tony O'Reilly, then in the process of building the investment company that would ultimately become Fitzwilton.

Murray Consultants was organised into two teams working under Murray and Milton while Horgan looked after the administration.

Milton's team handled much of the O'Reilly business, and Milton himself acted for him in a personal capacity. Over the next 20 years Milton's name was to become synonymous with Tony O'Reilly and his interests in Ireland. These include Independent Newspapers and the mining company Arcon International Resources.

Fitzwilton and Waterford Wedgwood, O'Reilly's two other major Irish investments, are represented by other PR companies. However, the relationship between Milton and O'Reilly is such that Milton may be brought in by O'Reilly over the heads of these firms at times of crisis. Last year Milton stepped in above the head of Mary Finan's Wilson Hartnell agency when Dunnes Stores bought a 9.1 per cent stake in Fitzwilton.

Murray Consultants' services are much in demand. Last September Milton was called by Investment Bank of Ireland to assist Aran Energy in its defence against a hostile takeover attempt by the US oil giant Atlantic Richfield (Arco). This provoked the resignation of Pat Heneghan as public relations adviser to Aran Energy.

Joe Murray personally handles Murphy's and Heineken's PR business in Ireland as well as the agribusiness group IAWS. His style is more reserved than Milton's, but he is equally adept at handling difficult situations for his clients. He acted far National Irish Bank following its sacking of Jim Lacey as chief executive in April 1994.

LARRY Goodman and Food Industries were a major client of Joe Murray in the 1980s but he resigned the controversial account in 1990, just before the collapse into examinership of Goodman International.

Murray Consultants' other clients include Arnotts, Avonmore and Golden Vale. The company also does advisory work for CIE and some banks including AIB. There are two other directors, Dermot Breen and, then more recently, James Morrissey. Both already have their own clients and were not involved in the tax debacle.

Many of the leading names in the public relations industry have worked at Murray, including the former Government Press Secretary, Frank Dunlop, who left in 1989 to start his own consultancy. Another director, Ita Gibney, left in 1992 to work for Greencore, before starting her own firm last year. The departure of these two directors pointed to divisions at the company but, in a manner becoming a top public relations firm, the departures were always outwardly amicable.

By the early 1990s, Murray, Milton and Horgan, had built Murray Consultants into a substantial business with a turnover estimated at £2 million and capable of making profits of about £300,000 in a good year. Its financial strength was considerable. In the year following the £1 million tax settlement, the three directors extracted more than £650,000 from the company's reserves to fund an alternative pension nest egg.

It will be a test of Murray's and Milton's considerable spin doctoring talents to prevent long term damage being done to Murray Consultants by this week's news. The key message they are trying to get across is that the tax irregularities were the personal tax affairs of the three directors and not related to the company. Beyond that, it is a case of battening down the hatches until the storm blows over, they hope.

The strategy appeared to be working on Monday night.

Some serious questions had been raised about how the three men were allowed to settle with the Revenue through an offshore company, but no answers were being provided by the Revenue Commissioners.

The picture looked even better on Wednesday after the affair was brought up in the Dail at an adjournment debate on Tuesday night. The Government made some appropriate noises about tightening up the relevant legislation and that seemed to be about the size of it. The identity of the clients who made the offshore payments remains a mystery and as long as it, does so, Murray Consultants might avoid serious damage.