Fundraising for the Peter McVerry Trust has fallen from €15 million in 2022 to about €2 million for 2025, with an “extremely cautious” projection of just €500,000 for next year, politicians have heard.
The charity was historically “rife with conflicts of interest”, Tony O’Brien, the chairperson of the homeless charity, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The committee also heard the charity spent money on an enclosure for two peacocks at a period property it purchased in Co Kildare.
Francis Doherty, a former chief executive of the trust, said spending at Kerdiffstown House in Naas included €300,000 to resurface and widen the driveway. There was also an “unauthorised lift shaft being constructed on the side of the period property”.
Mr Doherty said he was told the lift was planned because his predecessor, Pat Doyle, did not want staff or service users in the commercial kitchen “using the same entrance as him”. There was “no planning application or architectural or engineering support” for the lift, he said.
Kerdiffstown House became “almost a symbol of the things that were wrong and maybe a sense of a loss of control”, said Mr Doherty, who was chief executive of the trust between June and October 2023. He succeeded Mr Doyle, who was the chief executive for 18 years.
Mr Doherty said a conflict of interest existed as the auditor of the trust for 17 years was the brother of the owner of Rubycon, which became the charity’s main maintenance contractor, and paid several million euro for works over several years.
The long-term auditor and his brother sold properties to the trust in 2018, which “did not comply with building regulations at the time”.
“There were substantial defects, but the CEO at the time agreed to buy them in 2018 with the trust’s money for €975,000 and later paid Rubycon over €300,000 of the trust’s funds to remedy defects which it was responsible for fixing in the first place,” he said.
Mr Doherty referenced a €350,000 payment made to New Directions, a private counselling service firm that Mr Doyle announced he was going to work for when he left the trust.
Mr Doherty said his predecessor told him the fund was “actually to make sure that New Directions had sufficient funds to pay his salary for the coming years, while they apply for charitable status”.
Mr O’Brien later told TDs he believes New Directions was “harmless” and not the “faulty party” in the process and had refunded the payment.
Mr O’Brien said that a section 19 disclosure under the Criminal Justice Act had been made to An Garda Síochána regarding an “invoicing matter” linked to Assisi House, a related charity the trust had taken over.
Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan said Mr Doyle was invited to the committee but had written indicating that since 2023 the board has told him not to speak about the Peter McVerry Trust. He also had no comment to make on a report by the State’s spending watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), the Dublin Bay South TD said.
The PAC agreed in private session to invite the former board and chair to a subsequent session of the committee and to re-extend its invitation to Mr Doyle in light of the testimony heard at Thursday’s hearing.
The trust was established in the 1980s by Jesuit priest Fr Peter McVerry and provides affordable housing and services to thousands of tenants and homeless people.
The government gave €15 million to keep the charity afloat at the end of 2023 after its cashflows collapsed following years of underbidding for inappropriate housing contracts.
Misgovernance in the trust and lax financial controls have been criticised in a series of damning reports by housing and charity regulators and the C&AG.
