The housing charity Peter McVerry Trust has denied knowledge of complaints from contractors about being asked to perform work on trust employees’ homes — but acknowledged it had previously rented a property from an employee.
In a wide-ranging update for the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, the charity said it had been leasing a property from a current employee, but insisted that the rent paid had been set “at market value”.
The arrangement was terminated in May of last year, the trust said, in the wake of a spectacular collapse in its finances in the summer of 2023 which saw its new chief executive stand down having brought the matter to light.
The entire board of the charity was reconstituted.
The update follows the charity's appearance at the PAC three weeks ago, a fraught meeting in which it was revealed that the trust had spent €350,000 installing a driveway and peacock enclosure at a Co Kildare property where its former chief executive Pat Doyle held his headquarters during the covid pandemic.
In light of that revelation, the PAC had queried whether or not complaints had been received from contractors about being requested to perform works at employees’ residences at the expense of the trust itself — a suggestion the charity rejected.
"No. The witnesses are not aware of any reports of complaints from contractors of PMVT regarding being asked to undertake work on behalf of personal employees at their own homes and paid for by PMVT,” the organisation said in its update.
It clarified further that there is “no record” of any severance payment having been paid to Mr Doyle, who left the charity after 18 years at the helm in May 2023, though the trust did likewise confirm that Mr Doyle had remained on the payroll and had been paid an additional two months’ salary from that date as part of “an extensive handover to the incoming CEO”.
Asked why a €350,000 payment made to the trust’s subsidiary Assisi House had not appeared in the 2023 financial statements, the charity said the sum had been recorded as “an impairment”, which was eventually repaid.
That €350,000 had been initially transferred from Assisi House to New Directions, a private company delivering counselling services which the PAC heard had been where Mr Doyle had planned to work when he left the trust itself.
Regarding the transfer of multiple properties from the trust to the State in part-redemption of a €15m bailout the charity received in the wake of its financial collapse, the trust told the committee that all told 54 assets were to be transferred, some 31 of them in Dublin.
Elsewhere, Limerick City and County Council will take ownership of nine of the properties, with the local authorities in Kildare and Roscommon taking three apiece.