The 31-year-old heiress who can earn millions from contracts

PERHAPS the most colourful of Ireland’s new water millionaires is Caroline Murphy – the 31-year-old heiress to a construction fortune who this year walked away from the family business after her siblings and mother outvoted her plan to turn the firm into a workers’ co-operative.

Until March she was deputy chairman of the Murphy Group – a giant utilities and construction firm founded by her Kerryborn father John Murphy after he went to London to clear bomb sites in 1945.

From being an illiterate, penniless teenager, he built a business worth in excess of £300m by the time he passed away in 2009 at the age of 95. Two years before his death, he anointed Caroline as his successor when she was just 24.

Last year – with the help of a contract to install water meters in Clare, Limerick, part of Tipperary, Cork and Kerry – the Murphy Group employed 3,500 and turned over £953,871,205. Profits in 2013 amounted to £34.6m and there was more than £81m in cash in the bank.

Caroline’s shares are worth an estimated £40m and amount to 20% of the company. Yet in March she announced her intention to sell the shares to employees for nominal amounts, turning the firm into a workers’ co-op. When her plans were rejected by the board, she walked away to focus on social endeavours, British Labour Party politics, gay rights and the plight of Irish traveller women.

Having suffered a breakdown and attempted suicide after being raped, she is studying for a master’s degree, exploring violence against women and children.

Whether she has sold her shares yet remains unclear. The company declined to confirm when asked by MoS this week. But either way her company, along with Morrison Mainline Ltd, the firm chosen to work with them on the metering, are poised to earn more than €100m from Irish Water.