The winner of the gong in ‘The One That Got Away’ category belongs to the hit BBC TV drama series, The Silence, which featured among 37 feature films and 47 documentaries refused funding by the Irish Film Board over the past two years, The Sunday Times reports. Read the full story

The US entertainment giant is believed to be about to take over the former Laura Ashley shop on Dublin’s Grafton St, according to The Sunday Tribune, quoting “numerous sources”. The seven-figure lease has been signed following the collapse of a deal to lease the neighbouring Dunnes Stores premises.

Irish Entertainment & Media to grow by a billion dollars over the next five years to 2014 – says PwC at the launch of its 11th Entertainment & Media Outlook

Overall, Irish E&M will grow by 4.1% compounded annually over the next five years to 2014 reaching US$5.6 billion. Read the full story

Broadcaster Pat Kenny’s pension fund has been hammered by the collapse in global property markets and Irish banking shares, he told The Sunday Times.

Kenny, 62, is an independent contractor and does not have an RTE pension to fall back on.

“My pension, like everyone else’s, has been devastated,” he said. “We were all told property and shares were safe places to invest. There is virtually no-one who has not lost out.”

Kenny and Gay Byrne are joint investors in one project that will be taken over by NAMA later this year. They invested in the Four Seasons hotel in Budapest as part of a syndicate put together by financier Derek Quinlan. That syndicate now owes Anglo Irish Bank €30m.

He also invested in AIB and Bank of Ireland shares for many years.

“They were prudent investments. I tried to spread the risk around and, lo and behold, you get caught.”

Meanwhile, The Sunday Independent highlights one group of “retirees” who won’t have too many financial worries. Four TDs who have declared their intention not to stand at the next election – Tom Kitt, Mary Upton, Liz McManus and Olwyn Enright – will share a lump-sum payment plus pension worth around €12m.

Under the current system, the four will receive a termination allowance equivalent to two months’ salary. They will then receive a further €36,906 over the next six months followed by payments between €20,000 and €32,000 until the termination payment runs out. A total of €1.1m.

Based on current pay levels, they will each receive a tax-free pension lump sum of €147,636 and then every month for the rest of their lives those with more than 20 years’ service will receive half of their current annual salary of €98,000.

Nice work if you can get it.

The OECD Committee on Fiscal Affairs invites public comments on draft changes to the Commentary on Article 17 of the OECD Model Tax Convention, which deals with cross-border income derived from the activities of entertainers and sportsmen. Read the full story

Toy Story 3 has done the business at the Irish box office, raking in more than €4.5m already this summer, according to the Sunday Independent. The full-length animation feature overtook Shrek Forever After in the past week and is ranks only behind The Simpsons and Shrek The Third when it comes to making money from Irish audiences.

LN-Gaiety Holdings, the UK concert promotion company 49%-owned by Dermot Desmond’s MCD, recorded a 60% increase in operating profits to €15.5m in the year to March 2009, according to The Sunday Times. Read the full story

Despite the cut-throat nature of live music promotion, there has never been any shortage of talented individuals willing to do a turn.  The Sunday Business Post profiles Shane Harnett and Shane Madden, the Dublin entrepreneurs behind Summer Blowout, a day-long festival taking place next week at the 10,000-capacity Donnybrook stadium. Read the full story

Bono has apparently spent some of the time recuperating from his back injury penning tracks for a new U2 album. According the Sunday Times, the band played three new songs on their stage comeback in Italy this weekend and manager Paul McGuinness confirmed a new album could even be completed this side of Christmas. Read the full story

The Sunday Times devotes a full page to the question of whether Ireland’s tax breaks for film investments should be cut because they have failed to deliver a sustainable indigenous movie industry. Read the full story