Prime Time will have a programme on charities including Peter McVerry tonight

I watched the programme last night.

1) It did point out that the PMVT was the largest supplier of homeless services in the country.

The money donated by the Capuchins was not used for the purpose for which it was donate. That was wrong.

But it was not siphoned off. It was used for the purposes of the PMVT apart from the odd payment to the counselling charity which was returned.

2) The main criticism of the horse charity was that it appealed for donations for horses it had already bought.

Think about this for a moment.
I run a horse rescue charity.
I have an opportunity to rescue a horse if I pay €500.
So I run a Go Fund Me page and try to raise the €500.

It is far more efficient to have a pot of money and buy the horse, and then fund raise afterwards.
The horse charity did absolutely nothing wrong in this case.

Next they will be complaining that the €100 needed for the child in this ad was raised and the rest of the €20,000 raised should have been returned.

 
Based on the examples given, the Charities Regulator has questions to answer.

I would not condemn it based solely on a one off programme.

Their failure to support David Hall and the other guy when Revenue sued them was inexcusable.


They do need to be more practical and less legalistic e.g. emailing an individual who is not a trustee but against whom a complaint had been raised.

But their role is not to run charities and to approve all payments. There will be fraud. There will be misbehaviour.

We need to get the balance right between appropriate regulation and overregulation.

Brendan
 
peemac said:
Yet they do Trojan work with dogs and cats
Click to expand...

Kildare Animal Foundation is my favourite animal rescue. They have their 30th anniversary this year and their annual Open Day will be on 14th July @ 1 pm and is well worth a visit.
 
There in no getting away from the fact that properties were purchased by the McVerry trust that were not done in a manner that was open and transparent.
Likewise ongoing maintenance contracts of property over many years were not done in a transparent manner.
Friends of friends comes to mind.
RTE really glossed over the issues despite advertising it as a "major investigation"
 
This seems ahem highly irregular.. McVerry Trust housing owners of a transport company!

A transport company owned by a couple who are tenants of the Peter McVerry Trust was given a €200,000 bus contract by the housing charity without a tender process, Prime Time has learned...

Mr Bollard is known to Pat Doyle, the former CEO of the McVerry Trust, through their connection with a sports club in Kildare...

The award of the €200,000 transport contract by the McVerry Trust to Mr Bollard's company was a breach of public procurement rules, which charities in receipt of significant public funding must abide by.

McVerry Trust tenant awarded bus contract without tender process

A transport company owned by a couple who are tenants of the Peter McVerry Trust was given a €200,000 bus contract by the housing charity without a tender process, Prime Time has learned.
www.rte.ie
 
What about the person living in the house connected with PMVT? It seemed like conflict of interest rules were broken and questions remain.
 
Mr. Bollard was also given a tenancy by the McVerry Trust and, again, the circumstances look a bit unusual. He sold his own house in 2016 which he brought in 2007 so unlikely to have made anything on that, but surely he could have rented privately. The market wasn't anything as constrained back then. He wasn't homeless nor was he on a social housing list.
 

Outlier, or tip of the iceberg. Will we ever know which?
 
It gets worse...

The board of the Peter McVerry Trust instructed the then CEO of the charity not to engage freely with the Charities Regulator about governance issues at the troubled Trust, correspondence seen by Prime Time shows... The Peter McVerry Trust declined to comment on the letter from the board and Mr Doherty’s interpretation of it as a "gagging order".

Ex-CEO says McVerry Trust Board restricted contact with Regulator

The board of the Peter McVerry Trust instructed the then CEO of the charity not to engage freely with the Charities Regulator about governance issues at the troubled Trust
www.rte.ie
 
Agree with Brendan - PMVT does amazing work - especially with people with addictions and support needs. These people don't just need a roof over their head - it's the whole 'wrap around ' package to help them sustain the tenancy and get help.

I think latest homeless figures are around 13000 including children. How many of these could actually manage a tenancy even if sufficient housing was available ?
 
I agree that the charity does good work.
The fact remains that their is a very large deficit of accountability within it.
There are people particularly at the top of the organisation running it as if it was their own and for their own benefit and for the benefit of their friends
It really needs a proper clean and to be run professionally.
The organisation is dealing with large sums of money both public money and donations and should be answerable for how this money is spent.
It cannot be allowed to continue to carry on as it is just because it is a " well packaged organisation " which sounds good and does not want outside scrutiny.
For the record I have given many hours involvement in a charity as a fund raiser and at the coalface in a totally voluntary capacity over many years.
 
There are 26 homeless organisations in Ireland.
 
26 and PMVT is the largest and most progressive. Plus all the local councils.

Think anyone who is homeless and needs help is well covered ...
 
A problem with many organisations is future planning or more correctly the lack of.
In this case I suspect what happened was something along the lines if the following.
The founders realised that their creation was becoming beyond their abilities.
They decided to bring in outside experts to run things.
The founders at this stage probably took a back seat.
Then it became a victim of it's own success and grew even more.
While there may not have been outright skulduggery best practice may not have been followed.
Again I do not know so I can only surmise that the board began to try getting a handle on things.
This may have been when they requested the interm CEO to run all correspondence through the.
 
Report 2022
Finances
Extract from Consolidated Financial Statements of
Peter McVerry Trust CLG for the year ended 31 December 2022
Income
PMVT Generated Revenue and Capital Funding
State Funding
Total Income :€61,744,741.00
Operational Expenditure:€56,594,650.00
€4,730,000.00

The figures speak for themselves.
 
What speaks here please
 
So excess of income over expenses of 4.7m. Seems like a decent return.

Is that sufficient for reinvestment and a rainy day fund?

What are their future plans and are they generating enough to fund them?
 
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