Some social-housing projects, with funding approved, have disappeared from the council’s pipeline

The red-brick building at 180 to 187 Townsend Street has silver metal shutters, painted with white hearts.

It’s been vacant for years – since 2011. 

The Peter McVerry Trust got funding approval to redevelop it for social housing in 2015. It went to tender in 2022.

A council report from February 2025 says the project to turn it into modern housing is underway and was due to be done already, earlier this year.

If so, it will be the last housing project the charity completes in Dublin city for the foreseeable future. 

The charity has been a major provider of homeless and housing services in Dublin.

Between 2019 and 2022, it got more than €140 million from state sources to support its service provision, according to a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General. Most of that funding was via the Dublin Region Homeless Executive.

But other sites are vacant and frozen, part of the ongoing fall-out from the financial and governance issues that came to light at Peter McVerry Trust in 2023.

But Dublin city councillors say they have largely been left in the dark in the past year by council executives over how issues at the trust are impacting the provision of social homes.

Clues include the disappearance of projects from the council’s housing supply reports – with 32 planned homes across the city – on Sherrard Street, Seville Place and Echlin Street – dropping off that list of active projects.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that the trust is handing back about 20 sites, bought with public money, to 11 councils. 

The Department of Housing has not yet responded to a query as to how many planned social homes are not proceeding due to problems at the Peter McVerry Trust. 

Independent Councillor Mannix Flynn says the council should provide better oversight of how housing charities spend public money, and tell councillors if planned social housing isn’t going ahead. 

Instead, “we are getting silence”, he says.

Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin says the tendering system for homeless services contributed to conditions that led the charity to the brink of bankruptcy. 

“The conditions for Pat Doyle [the former CEO of the Trust] and his team to do what they did were actually created by the government’s funding model,” says Ó Broin.

Social homes, lost or delayed

A council report in April 2023 said Peter McVerry Trust had funding approved to build 12 social homes at Sherrard Street in Dublin 1.

It was at the second stage of a funding application to build 11 homes at Seville Place in Dublin 1, the same report said. 

Meanwhile, the trust was planning to build nine homes on Echlin Street in Dublin 8, as of January 2024. 

All three projects were supposed to be done this year. As of February 2025, they no longer appeared on the council’s housing supply report, but the council didnt’ respond to a request for an update on why.

According to the Irish Times in February, the trust has sold the Echlin Street site to a private owner who has no plans for social housing. 

Three other planned projects are delayed but still proceeding, after the trust handed them back to the council, says a council spokesperson.

The Iveagh Trust is taking over the delivery of 10 homes at Fishamble Street, and housing charity Tuath Housing is set to build 12 homes at Halston Street. 

The council is looking for an alternative housing charity to build eight homes at Shaw Street, says a spokesperson for Dublin City Council. 

Flynn, the independent councillor, says councillors on the housing committee were not informed that planned social housing was not going ahead. 

They’re not getting updates, he said. “It's almost like the issue doesn’t exist.”

The Peter McVerry Trust doesn’t appear as an agenda item for any housing committee meeting in the last year. 

Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callagahan, who sits on the committee, says she was aware of delays to delivery and is concerned. “The amount of money being spent on buildings that are just sitting there.” 

Callaghan says she was not aware that some projects on the social housing supply reports were no longer listed as proceeding.

Why not going ahead?

The Department of Housing gave €15 million in exceptional funding to the Peter McVerry Trust to keep its homeless services running between December 2023 and March 2024, a department spokesperson says. 

The funding had conditions attached, around financial management and governance, says the spokesperson. 

“The funding conditions included a specific condition whereby the Minister has the right to recover the value of the exceptional funding provided, by way of transfer of assets,” says the spokesperson. 

The department has worked with the Peter McVerry Trust to identify 20 social housing or homeless hostel developments across 11 council areas that councils could build out directly or by transferring them to other housing charities, he says. 

The trust is not currently allowed to buy more land or property under the bailout agreement, says the spokesperson.

A spokesperson for the Peter McVerry Trust said transferring land back to councils was the right thing to do. “This strategic decision was part of a broader effort to stabilise and strengthen the organisation following past governance and financial challenges.”

She didn’t respond to queries as to how many developments nationwide are not proceeding, or how many sites the charity is selling. 

The Department of Housing spokesperson indicated that it doesn’t expect the Peter McVerry Trust to wind up operations.

“The focus remains on the Trust completing outstanding projects and contractual obligations to current social housing projects,” says the spokesperson. 

“The Department’s priority continues to be the uninterrupted provision of these services and the Department is satisfied that the Trust continues to fulfil this mandate going forward,” they said.

Could it happen again?

Years ago, the government stopped providing 100 percent funding of homeless services, says Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin housing spokesperson. 

It told homeless charities they needed to demonstrate that they were bringing at least 10 percent of the funding in order to get contracts, he said.

That model, and competitive tendering, created an incentive for a charity to bid less than the real cost of running the service, he says. 

“The conditions for Pat Doyle [the former CEO of the Trust] and his team to do what they did were actually created by the government’s funding model,” says Ó Broin.

The Peter McVerry Trust was underbidding on contracts by as much as 30 percent, he says. So, it was granted multiple contracts and it quickly grew its operations, he said.

In addition to its work on homeless services, it was also an approved housing body, which got capital funding to build housing. 

At some point, it began to use some of that capital funding to plug gaps in its current spending, says Ó Broin.

The report of the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority found that a sinking fund set aside for capital projects was used to alleviate a cash flow crisis in the charity in March 2023.  

In 2020, the heads of four major homeless charities wrote to the Minister of Housing at the time, Fianna Fáil TD Darragh O’Brien. and warned that the funding model for homeless services was not sustainable, Ó Broin said. 

“There were red flags being raised and nobody in the department did anything,” says Ó Broin.  

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing – which he’s a member of – wants to hear from staff at the Peter McVerry Trust and the Department of Housing officials, Ó Broin says. He doesn’t believe the system has been fully reformed. 

“The big issue is – how did this happen?” he says. “What changes have been made to ensure that this doesn’t happen in another organisation?”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing says that it provides funding to councils which in turn fund homeless services. Councils must provide at least 10 percent of the cost of homeless services from their own resources. 

“The procurement and tendering of services is a matter for individual local authorities, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage have no role in this process,” he says. 

The Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD James Browne is considering the recommendations of the County and City Managers Association, which has reviewed the funding model, he said, including procurement and tendering.