CARR COMMUNICATIONS made a contract-related payment of €650,000 to its former managing director Dermot McCrum following his resignation last year, pushing the company into the red.

The firm made an operating loss of €151,400 in the year to June 30th, 2008, compared with a profit of €580,000 the previous year, according to accounts just filed by the company.

Carr posted a pretax loss of €214,000 for the year after paying the €650,000 on “contract-related termination payments”.

Mr McCrum is the sole beneficiary of the payments. He was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The firm had retained profits of €6.2 million at the end of the year.

Mr McCrum sold his controlling stake in Carr to company chairman Fergus Hoban and director Donal Cronin last year.

Long-serving Carr executives Terry Prone and Tom Savage left the company at the same time, as did their son, Anton Savage, a former general manager of Carr.

Carr’s accounts show that Mr McCrum and Ms Prone ceased to be directors in February 2008.

Mr McCrum’s firm, the Strand Teleproduction Company, provided services totalling €907,582 to Carr during the year, while Ms Prone provided services totalling €79,053, according to related-party transactions in the accounts.

Mr Cronin provided services totalling €136,157 in the year. Employee numbers fell to 23 from 26, as staff costs dropped fell 9 per cent to €1.46 million. Directors’ salaries rose 71 per cent to €233,900.

“A number of existing consultancy contracts will come up for renewal in the normal course of business and, like all our businesses, it is not certain that all of these will be retained,” the directors said in the accounts.

The company said it continued to “keep a healthy balance of full-time and freelance contractors on its books”.