The Chief Executive of the Housing Agency, Bob Jordan, sold an investment property to the Peter McVerry Trust, Prime Time has learned.
The sale raises "blatant" conflict of interest concerns, according to corporate governance expert Jillian van Turnhout who said she was "aghast" at the transaction.
The Peter McVerry Trust is one Ireland's largest charities for homeless people and Mr Jordan has long been an influential figure in the housing sector. A former head of Threshold, Mr Jordan also worked as a special advisor to then Housing Minister Simon Coveney between 2016 and 2017.
He took the helm of the Housing Agency in 2021. It is responsible for the delivery of government housing policy.
In 2020, when Mr Jordan sold his property to the McVerry Trust, he was employed by Dublin City Council as a senior manager at the McVerry Trust’s largest funder, the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DHRE).
The DRHE, which is led by Dublin City Council, provided over €16m in funding to the McVerry Trust in 2020.
Mr Jordan’s title at the DRHE was National Director for Housing First, an initiative aimed at providing stable accommodation and support for people at the extreme end of homelessness, including those with mental health or addiction problems who are living in the street.
The McVerry Trust is the major supplier of Housing First services to the State. In the charity’s Annual Report for 2020 – the year of the house sale - it stated that it had "been responsible for 61% of the services delivered under the National Housing First Implementation Plan."
Aside from the financial aspect, Ms van Turnhout told Prime Time that there is also a "loyalty" aspect to the conflict of interest "given that the individual has a relationship with the charity in relation to funding, policy-making, decision-making."
Ms van Turnhout, who is a Chartered Director Certified in Corporate Governance, points to the Charities Regulator’s advice on how to manage conflicts of interest. "The test, they say is if a reasonable person heard that you made this decision what would their judgement be."
In response to a request for comment, Mr Jordan confirmed to Prime Time that he sold his four-bedroom property in Kildare to the McVerry Trust in December 2020 at an "open-market value" of €250,000.
Although the charity paid Mr Jordan the market rate for the house, it came with a sitting tenant and her family who hadn’t paid rent for a year, meaning that achieving market rate for such a property would have been very difficult.
Selling a house with a tenant in situ typically makes it less appealing to most would-be purchasers and when the house in question is occupied by a family who are not paying rent, it becomes an even more unappealing proposition. However, the sale to the McVerry Trust was not conducted on the open market.
In a series of follow-up questions to his initial response, Prime Time asked Mr Jordan why he engaged in this property transaction, given that it could appear as if the McVerry Trust were doing him a favour by "taking a troublesome, non-income yielding property" off his hands. He declined to respond to that query, stating he did "not wish to make a further comment."
Mr Jordan said the offer to buy the house came from the McVerry Trust, who he believed was providing services to the tenant. However, sources told Prime Time the charity did not deal with the tenant.
In his statement, Mr Jordan said he received payments from Kildare County Council for the tenancy for two months through the Homeless Housing Assistance Payment (Homeless HAP) scheme.
He said after that Kildare County Council concluded the occupants "were not in fact entitled to a family Homeless HAP [Housing Assistance] payment, resulting in the Council discontinuing the payment."
Mr Jordan said that "no rent payments were made to me during the full year of 2020."
It is unclear why the McVerry Trust would have bought Mr Jordan’s property later that year if the tenant did not qualify for Homeless HAP.
"The object of the Peter McVerry Trust is to provide housing to those in need. If someone doesn’t fulfil that requirement, or if they are purchasing a property that cannot be used for that object, you have to question, why did they purchase that house at that moment in time?" Ms van Turnhout said.
The Department of Housing confirmed to Prime Time that, as National Director for Housing First, Mr Jordan was an employee of the Dublin City Council.
Under the Local Government Act 2001, council employees must abide by a Code of Conduct which stipulates that they "must maintain the highest standards of integrity by avoiding conflicts of interest."
In his statement Mr Jordan said, "For the avoidance of doubt, the Code of Conduct provided by the Local Government Act 2001 does not and is not intended to apply to this situation, as I was the National Director of Housing First based in Dublin City Council. Mindful of the Code’s provisions, however, I did indeed advise Dublin City Council management in advance of the disposal of my interest in the property, which was not in any event located in the functional area of Dublin City Council."
We contacted Dublin City Council and they stated that "The code of conduct applies to all employees of the organisation, whether full-time or employed on an atypical basis (e.g. temporary, part time or fixed term contract)."
Prime Time understands that when buying Mr Jordan’s property, the charity did not go through its standard housing procurement processes.
Under its typical procurement procedures, when a property is identified or offered the charity would approach the local council to confirm that they would support the acquisition or lease of the accommodation. If the council is happy to refer someone on its housing list as a tenant for the property, the McVerry Trust housing development team would have the property surveyed and independently valued, and a formal application for funds to make the purchase would be prepared.
We asked the board of the McVerry Trust why the charity purchased a house with a tenant in situ who did not qualify for homeless HAP support.
It did not address that question.
In June, Mr Jordan announced that he will leave his post as head of the Housing Agency in late September 2024.
Former McVerry Trust CEO Pat Doyle did not respond to questions about the purchase of the property from Mr Jordan. He has previously declined to answer specific questions put to him by Prime Time about governance at the charity during his tenure.
Mr Doyle has stated that he is cooperating with ongoing investigations by the Charities Regulator and the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (AHBRA). The AHBRA investigation was announced in September and the Charities Regulator investigation in October.
The ongoing questions around the charity’s governance has, unsurprisingly, hit donations, with knock-on repercussions for staff.
Aside from the ongoing investigations, in recent months, Prime Time has revealed substantial breaches of trust by the charity and that millions of euro donated to it for specific purposes, such as the purchase of a football pitch for teenagers, were diverted for other spending.
Well-placed sources told Prime Time that the number of employees in the charity’s fundraising section has been reduced from a peak of at least twelve full-timers to just two part-time staff.
Some corporate donors have also distanced themselves from the charity. A former stalwart supporter, Just Eat, hasn’t worked with the charity since last December, for example. The company declined to comment on the reasons for the cooling of the relationship.
Once the charity’s governance issues were made public, there was a reduced impetus within the charity to actively fundraise because "it doesn’t look right to be going out looking for money [from the public] in the middle" of such a reputational crisis a well placed source told Prime Time.
Instead, the charity has turned to government, which relies on it for housing and supporting some of the most vulnerable citizens in the State. The charity recently received a €15m bailout from the government.
The McVerry Trust had been a beneficiary of the Law Society’s Calcutta Run for 24 years until this year. The Law Society told Prime Time that the "Calcutta Run Committee reviews its beneficiaries each year. When approached for 2024, Peter McVerry Trust removed themselves for consideration as a beneficiary of the Calcutta Run 2024."
Along with the charity’s fundraisers, there have been other staff cuts.
The communications section has been reduced from four to one – with the remaining staff member currently on leave. Questions put to the charity yesterday by Prime Time were answered by PR firm Drury Communications.
The charity’s housing development section, which once employed eight people, is due to close this week: "that department is gone," said a source. It was responsible for duties that included property acquisition, the maintenance of stock and maintaining relationships with owners from whom the charity was leasing accommodation.
Noting that the McVerry Trust is the largest provider of one-bed social housing units, another well-placed source said that the decision to close the housing development section "will result in fewer people being housed and homeless figures going up."
The problems at the charity are rooted in poor management. An internal document seen by Prime Time notes that it was not until April 2023 that the Trust appointed its first Director of Finance.
"Prior to this the most senior finance role was a Head of Finance and as such the CEO was the de facto Director of Finance."
The same document also highlights how until recently there was an absence of relatively basic financial controls. Dating from mid-2023, the document contains a promise that a Purchase Order system would be "rolled out in August and fully established across the [organisation] by the end of September 2023."
It also stated that "No Invoices will be accepted without a valid Purchase Order number. The absence of such a system to date has led to expenditure being incurred" without appropriate transparency.
The poor system of financial controls until 2023 is all the more surprising given the size of the McVerry Trust and the scale of public money it receives. According to its 2022 accounts, the McVerry Trust had assets of €187m, income of €62m and 530 whole-time equivalent staff with a further 280 on its relief panel. In the year, it supported 4,425 people across adult services and in family homeless accommodation.
The problems at the charity raise questions about the effectiveness of board oversight in the recent past. Prime Time sent the board a number of questions, including whether it was aware of the dominant financial role of the former CEO and, if so, was it a concern for the board.
The board did not respond to specific questions, but in a statement, it said, "As an organisation, we recognise the serious issues of the past and we have undertaken extensive work in rebuilding our processes and structures over the past twelve months, including the recruitment of new senior management team and finance team members to ensure best practice going forward."
Previous revelations
The charity’s purchase of a house from the Housing Agency’s Bob Jordan is the latest questionable McVerry Trust property transaction revealed by Prime Time.
We previously reported that the charity’s auditor Donal Ryan purchased a house in Celbridge and transferred it on the same day in 2016 to the charity.
READ: McVerry Trust tenant awarded bus contract without tender process
Mr Ryan was the external auditor of the Trust’s accounts from 2006 to 2023. He had also served as auditor of the Blanchardstown Offenders for New Directions charity, which Pat Doyle managed before taking over as CEO of the McVerry Trust in 2005.
The Celbridge house is currently leased by the charity to a friend of former McVerry Trust CEO Pat Doyle. However, public records show that in late 2016, the friend sold a home he had purchased around the peak of the property bubble, ten years earlier.
Around the time of that sale, he moved into the Celbridge house that had just been purchased by the McVerry Trust.
The friend declined to comment to Prime Time when asked how he qualified for a tenancy with the charity.
Standard practice at the McVerry Trust was that homes were allocated to people on the social housing list. Home allocation is a process that can take years and while a homeowner, the friend would not have qualified to be on the housing list.
An internal Peter McVerry Trust document seen by Prime Time says that the "property was bought using PMVT's charitable funds and the tenants given a 25-year lease at 80% market rate."
Prime Time also revealed that the charity later gave a €200,000 per annum contract to a company co-owned by the tenant and that the contract was not offered for public tender, as required under procurement regulations. The tenant previously worked for the McVerry Trust, so at one stage he was a tenant, contractor and employee of the charity.
In another case, Prime Time reported that the charity spent around €400,000 on a house in Kerry that was planned for use for the family friend of Pat Doyle.
READ: €400k spent on home for use by family of friend of ex-McVerry CEO
In an internal McVerry Trust document from July 2023 obtained by Prime Time, it is stated that the former CEO Pat Doyle had advised senior staff in the charity that the property in Kerry was for the use of the family of a specific friend.
The document states that when Mr Doyle's successor as CEO, Francis Doherty, sought evidence as to whether the family of Mr Doyle’s friend was eligible for such social housing, none could be obtained. The document says the property was acquired using funds donated under the Department of Justice Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP).
That money, the document noted, was given for social housing "and not private or other forms of affordable housing."
Ultimately, the proposed tenancy did not go ahead after Mr Doherty - who resigned after fewer than five months at the helm of the charity - questioned its legitimacy.
