The Peter McVerry Trust is to transfer more than 50 properties it owns worth €15 million to local authorities to repay the Government for emergency funding it provided to the homeless service two years ago.
The transfer of the 54 properties to the State is part of a bailout agreement between the Government and the charity after they were given a €15m loan to keep afloat in November 2023.
Under that deal, the Government reserved the right to recover the value of the funding through the transfer of "unencumbered properties", which are properties paid by for by the charity's own funds.
In a statement, the Peter McVerry trust say it is "working closely with the Department of Housing to identify and transfer unencumbered assets, including housing units and vacant properties, to the appropriate local authorities."
It says 27 houses and apartments in the Dublin region are in the middle of the transfer process, but it said due to the "sensitive nature of these transactions", it would not specify where they are located.
In a seperate statement, the Department of Housing said the 27 homes worth almost €8m would be transferred to Dublin City Council, while the remaining 27 properties are being valued and surveyed in preparation for transfer.
It said: "When all such properties are transferred from PMVT to the Local Authorities, the State will have recovered the €15m of emergency funding."
An RTÉ investigation into the charity found a number of breaches of corporate governance, which included the leasing of a charity-owned house to the family of a friend of then-CEO Pat Doyle, even though the friend did not qualify for social housing.
The charity also later awarded a €200,000 per annum contract to a company operated by the same friend without going through a tendering process.
The charity has also been the subject of two damning reports by the two bodies responsible for regulating it, the Charities Regulatory Authority and the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority.
The McVerry Trust recorded income in 2022 of €61.7m, around two-thirds of which came from the State.
However, in mid-2023, fewer than two months after taking over from Mr Doyle as CEO, Francis Doherty reported serious governance concerns to the McVerry Trust board and to the regulators.
That prompted the investigations by the two regulators and the charity sought emergency funding from the State, receiving a €15m bailout starting in late 2023.
