According to its latest accounts, St John of God Community Services Ltd (SJOGCS) received €229million from the HSE in 2024.
However, the Section 38 charity was unable to make any headway in clearing a historical deficit of €31million.
In all, SJOGCS has been given more than €1.6billion in State funding in the ten years up to 2024.
Now the Department of Children, Disability and Equality has agreed a debt write-off involving €18million paid in advance supplementary funding that the charity would otherwise have had to repay.
SJOGCS is a full subsidiary of St John of God Hospitaller Services Group, which is controlled by the St John of God order.
‘The order has just 14 members in Ireland’
But in a historic move last year, all remaining members of the religious order stood aside from direct management and governance positions in the group’s companies, charities and schools.
The order has just 14 remaining members in Ireland, 12 of whom are aged over 80.
Day-to-day management is now carried out by lay managers who are loyal to the order, by means of a corporate structure approved by the Vatican.
The switch to lay management had long been planned to allow the order’s work to continue even in the absence of religious brothers.
However, it was hastened by the conviction of child abuser Br Aidan Clohessy last year.
Clohessy was jailed in June 2025 after a near decade-long MoS investigation exposed an international cover-up that allowed him to continue abusing children in Malawi as secret settlements were made to his previous victims in Ireland.
After the prosecution, leading figures such as former Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay and One In Four founder Colm O’Gorman called for the Provincial of the order, Br Donatus Forkan, to step down and demanded he be investigated for the reckless endangerment of children.
Gardaí are currently considering a criminal complaint of reckless endangerment made by the MoS against Br Forkan.
Details of the Department of Children, Disability and Equality’s bailout of SJOGCS are contained in the charity’s latest publicly filed accounts for 2024.
According to the accounts, the board of SJOGCS received a formal offer from the department of €18million to ‘partially resolve legacy accumulated deficits.’
The offer was received on June 30 last year and accepted by the board the following month.
However, as of late last year, the precise mechanism of the bailout had not been fully ironed out.
‘Uncertainty remains regarding the mechanism for grant provision and timing of receipt of the proposed financial support in full,’ the accounts, which were signed in mid-November 2025, state.
This uncertainty related to discussions between the department and SJOGCS about debt forgiveness being sought by the charity. However, this week both the department and SJOGCS confirmed the matter had been settled.
‘The matter was resolved in 2025 and the HSE continues to work closely with St John of God Community Services to ensure the delivery of sustainable high-quality services and supports for people with intellectual disabilities aligned to the HSE National Service Plan,’ a SJOGCS spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a department spokesman confirmed that ‘onceoff supplementary funding’ had been ‘provided to meet verified costs incurred… in the provision of services to people with intellectual disabilities on behalf of the State’.
The MoS has confirmed that the precise nature of the once-off funding agreed by the department involves an €18million sum in supplementary allocations already provided to SJOGCS by the HSE.
The agreement now means this €18million will not have to be repaid or cut from this year’s allocation to the charity.
The bailout move is a bid to stabilise services for the 8,000 clients who rely on SJOGCS for mental health and intellectual disability help throughout the country.
‘HSE critical of historical spending scandals’
In recent years, SJOGCS has been engaged in a standoff with the HSE about its funding allocation, which the charity says is insufficient.
The HSE has been critical of historical spending scandals at the wider St John of God group, including 2016 revelations in this newspaper about millions of euros in secret top-ups that were paid to managers.
The impasse has not been helped by a Government legacy of chronic underfunding of the Section 38 charities.
The consequences of this legacy were addressed in confidential HSE memos, published by the MoS in collaboration with HSE whistleblower Shane Corr.
These show the HSE has been warning the Government since at least 2018 that the entire disability sector is ‘facing systematic breakdown’ with many Section 38 entities ‘technically trading recklessly’.
St John of God has twice threatened to walk away from providing services to the State completely – most recently in February 2024.
Amid this brinkmanship, thousands of vulnerable service users, as well as 3,000 staff and volunteers, have continued to face worrying cutbacks and uncertainty.
According to the latest SJOGCS accounts, funding constraints are even potentially dangerous and pose ‘threats to safe and effective service delivery’.
‘Significant risks’ identified by the charity include ‘staffing shortages, ongoing funding constraints, and ageing infrastructure, including vehicles and buildings’.
According to SJOGCS, funding constraints mean required maintenance, upgrades and replacements to buildings, equipment and vehicles cannot be carried out.
‘In 2024, while some funding was secured, many high-risk areas remain unresolved, such as fire safety and electrical compliance, particularly in premises not covered by HIQA [Health Information and Quality Authority] regulations,’ the accounts warn.
Another risk identified is the inability of the charity to secure an internal auditor.
According to the accounts, a Director of Audit Risk and Compliance was appointed in December 2024 – but an internal auditor cannot be found even though funding for the post is available.
Even if an internal auditor were found, the accounts warn, this still would not be enough to cover a charity as large and complex as SJOGCS.
‘A singular post for Internal Audit falls well short of and is insufficient of the requirements for the completion of a comprehensive programme of Internal Audit,’ the accounts state.
‘This is a very significant gap and poses a risk to the organisation. Despite extensive efforts, the recruitment of the singular Internal Auditor through specialised financial recruitment agencies remains difficult and this has been a legacy issue for Community Services for some time.’
While the State-funded SJOGCS continues to struggle, other parts of the wider St John of God group earn millions from the money the HSE pays.
For example, SJOGCS pays the group’s profit-making private hospital in Stillorgan, Dublin, in the region of €6million to €7million annually for providing in-patient beds and other services.
In 2024, this jumped significantly to €8.3million.
In a further boost to the St John of God order’s finances, the private hospital pays annual rent of €2million back to the order for the use of its main building on the Stillorgan site.