The Peter McVerry Trust has been provided with a sum of emergency funds by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DHRE), the Business Post has learned.
Following revelations in August that the Peter McVerry Trust had encountered “potential financial issues”, the charity sought more than €5 million in emergency funding.
The Business Post understands a small portion of this amount has been released to the homelessness services and housing charity.
Discussions surrounding a wider bailout for the organisation are still underway, with the matter being reviewed by an oversight group established by the Department of Housing.
Darragh O’Brien, the Minister for Housing, has previously said that any funding provided to the body would require the charity to meet conditions.
A spokesperson for the DHRE has said that the charity has now been provided with a sum of funding to allow for the continuity of services.
They said the trust has been provided with “sufficient funding” to ensure that services will not be interrupted. The DRHE did confirm how much funding has been released.
The financial and governance issues at the Peter McVerry Trust, first revealed by this newspaper in August in August, prompted the charity to notified the DHRE and two regulators of charities. This has led to several external probes into financial issues at the charity.
The financial and governance issues raised also led to the appointment of PwC, the auditors, to review the charity’s finances.
The Department of Housing has established an oversight group to monitor the ongoing external audit and investigations by regulators into financial and governance matters at the trust.
On October 11, Francis Doherty resigned as chief executive of the Peter McVerry Trust. In his resignation letter he claimed to the board that the financial issues faced by the charity come following “repeated and long-standing governance failings”.
Doherty added that he felt his position was made “untenable” by the board and that when he took over as chief executive of the charity, there were “insufficient funds to meet creditor, payroll and Revenue commitments”.