It was an earned title, as he had dedicated many years to social inclusion and housing.
Before that, he was a youth officer for Foróige in Tallaght, and the director of a rehabilitation centre for ex-prisoners in Blanchardstown.
At the charity’s height, Mr Doyle oversaw the day-to-day operations of the Peter McVerry Trust – launched by high-profile anti-poverty activist Fr Peter McVerry.
During his 18 years at the charity, he also served in external roles, such as a member of the Co. Kildare housing committee and a director of the Irish Council for Social Housing.
He was also a board member of the Jesuit Refugee Service and was briefly appointed to the Government’s Housing Commission – setting the agenda for national housing policy.
During this time, the charity was caring for thousands of homeless people, people with addictions, ex-prisoners and those seeking asylum.
It held an extremely large property portfolio, and had a budget of over €60m and 700 staff.
Central to its success was Mr Doyle’s control over the charity.
His successor, Francis Doherty, told the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee yesterday that Mr Doyle was given free rein to get as many properties as possible.
Addressing the committee, Mr Doherty said that “on the face of it, the trust was a hugely successful and innovative organisation”.
Several members and guests at the PAC agreed that the charity, at one point, was considered “too big to fail”.
But it was all built on a risky practice.
The charity underbid on public service contracts, to win them, and then filled the funding gap with donated funds.
Contracts were therefore started without the full funding and gaps were filled using donations from the public.
The current chair of the trust, Tony O’Brien, agreed yesterday that the practice was akin to a “pyramid scheme”.
“It went on fine – all wrong, of course – but was sustainable when there was a sufficient amount of money coming in from donations ,” he said.
He added, however, that “eventually” funds ran out and the trust “dipped into” restricted bank accounts.
One of these accounts was a €4m-plus donation from charity the Capuchin Day Centre.
It was emptied while Mr Doherty was on annual leave, with €350,000 going to the company Mr Doyle was joining.
Mr Doherty said yesterday that Mr Doyle would later admit to him that the funding was used to pay for his new salary.
The money was later returned, and the company was not declared at fault.
Mr O’Brien described the scenario that unfolded as an “inevitable crash”, which came about because of a “cultural process” which enabled a “strategic need to grow” the services on offer.
He added that the trust is now seeking to cut back on services and said the difficulties caused by the underbidding approach were “compounded” by poor financial practices.
Mr Doyle retired before the true nature of the danger facing the charity was revealed.
He announced his resignation in May 2023 and was present at the trust’s AGM when its incoming CEO Mr Doherty was told he was inheriting a financially healthy organisation.
However, Mr Doherty would soon find out that this was far from the truth.
In the dying hours of his tenure as CEO, Mr Doyle applied for a loan worth €8m from a national bank on behalf of the charity.
The application was made an hour-and-a-half before his contract was due to expire.
While minutes of a meeting about this loan application later suggested that it was to help with cashflow, Mr Doherty told the PAC yesterday he believes that it was to keep the charity afloat.
Mr Doherty, who would resign as CEO four months into his term, soon found out that the charity owed €9.6m to creditors, including €6m to Revenue and €2m to the banks.
The scale of the fallout warranted an emergency State bailout of €15m.
Mr Doyle soon resigned from the Housing Commission after the details of the scandal were revealed.
One month prior, Mr Doyle agreed to a condition put to him by the board of the trust to not to comment publicly over its future activities.
Writing to excuse himself from yesterday’s PAC meeting, Mr Doyle said: “Between December 2023 and August 2024, upon request and given I had a statutory responsibility to do so, I engaged and cooperated fully with both the charity regulator and the housing regulator in their statutory investigations into the operations of the trust.
“I took the opportunity to set out a clear rationale for some of the decisions made within Peter McVerry Trust and give proper context to same, to clarify some inaccuracies, and correct some errors in the queries.
“The findings for both reports were published in the second half of 2024 respectively and are now available in the public record.’