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.

One of the tenants, Alan Bollard, who operates the bus company, later went on to work as head of logistics at the McVerry Trust. He left that job last year, but for several years, he was simultaneously a tenant, employee and contractor for the McVerry Trust.

Mr Bollard is known to Pat Doyle, the former CEO of the McVerry Trust, through their connection with a sports club in Kildare. Mr Doyle headed the charity from 2005 to 2023 and was CEO at the time the bus contract was given.

The Constitution of the Peter McVerry Trust states that the main object of the charity is to reduce homelessness.

However, public records show that in late 2016, Mr Bollard 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 a house that was purchased by the McVerry Trust.

Mr Bollard 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, Mr Bollard 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.”

The McVerry Trust is in financial difficulty and is currently being investigated by the Charities Regulator and the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority.

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.

Contracts valued at “over €50,000 must be advertised on the government’s platform, etenders.ie,” a procurement expert told Prime Time.

Additionally, an internal charity document seen by Prime Time noted that employing someone as a worker and a contractor would “fall foul” of certain public service rules that “you cannot be both an employee and contracted service provider to one organisation.”

“That shouldn’t happen, it is a conflict of interest,” the procurement expert said.

The contract for the bus service is funded by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE), which is led by Dublin City Council.

The DRHE told Prime Time that it paid €199,700 in 2023 to the McVerry Trust for the bus service, which transports “people experiencing homelessness to and from” McVerry Trust emergency accommodation in Kerdiffstown near Naas “to services based in Dublin city.”

The DRHE is the largest funder of the charity, providing over €19m in 2022, representing almost half of the €43 million it received in state funding that year.

In response to queries from Prime Time, the DHRE said: “The Peter McVerry Trust confirmed this service was not tendered and the PMVT executive recently agreed to begin a formal tender process for this transport service.”

Read more: Internal files reveal breach of trust at major housing charity

The bus service is run by Kildare-based Passenger Transport Solutions, which is owned by Mr Bollard and his partner. While the company has no obligation to follow public procurement rules, the Peter McVerry Trust does.

When asked about the absence of a tender for the bus contract, Mr Bollard told Prime Time: “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I put in a price for a contract to operate mini buses, and that’s what I do.”

Prime Time understands that Mr Bollard was hired as Head of Logistics at the Peter McVerry Trust, after he was awarded the bus contract. While his employment with the charity has ended, he remains a tenant and contractor of the charity.

The purchase by the Peter McVerry Trust of the property he is renting was done under unusual circumstances.

Property registration documents show that the charity’s external auditor, Donal Ryan, purchased the house and transferred it to the Peter McVerry Trust on the same day in 2016.

Experts told Prime Time that such a transaction would raise governance concerns for the charity as any external auditor should be seen to be fully independent of the charity they are auditing.

Investigations by the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority and the Charities Regulator into the Peter McVerry Trust are ongoing.

The probes were sparked when, within weeks of taking over from Pat Doyle, his successor as CEO, Francis Doherty, contacted the two regulators to warn them of significant cash-flow and debt problems at the charity.

Neither the charity nor Pat Doyle would comment on questions relating to the tender or the tenancy of the house in Celbridge, but they told Prime Time that they were cooperating with the Regulators’ investigations.

The charity, which recently received a €15m bailout, is one of the largest homeless charities in the state, with total income in 2022 from state bodies and donations of €62m. According to its 2022 annual report, it employed 530 whole-time equivalent staff supporting 4,425 people across adult services and in family homeless accommodation.