Terry Prone: Was reverence for Fr Peter McVerry enough to turn blind eye to trust?

The trust set up in Father Peter McVerry’s name has required a €15m state bailout having been revealed to have suffered — in Matt Cooper’s words — ‘major failures of corporate governance’. File Picture: PA

The first description I ever heard of Fr Peter McVerry was one word divided into two for emphasis. 

He was, a government minister told me, “IM-possible”. The first syllable uttered on a risen cadence, the second set of syllables accompanied by a headshake, often with closed eyes, as if opened eyes would cause the minister to see even more difficulties posed by the Jesuit.

That was 30 years ago and the government minister’s identity and indeed party have faded into an odd commonality of anonymity. Forgotten. 

Yet almost every government minister since then, and particularly those working in the area of the unhoused, pretty much signed up to that description of the Belfast-born priest: IM-possible.

It wasn’t so much that McVerry couldn’t be bought. It was that no matter how much a government acceded to his demands, he was never satisfied. Never grateful. 

Never appreciative of political effort. Always wanting more. 

An activist blessed with a permanent argumentative sense of entitlement, not for himself, but for those he saw as needing his help.

McVerry has always had the great strengths of the revolutionary, starting with a literal-minded opportunistic response to need which brooks no opposition.

If, 20 years back, Fr Peter met someone on his city rounds who needed a bed that night, that someone was getting a bed where Fr Peter lived, even if the other Jesuits in the communal domicile weren’t thrilled at the prospect. 

If you lived close to McVerry, buy-in to his crusades was easier than pushback.

Another great strength of his is a complete lack of a sense of humour. That’s not to say he does not laugh. He does. 

But humour as a method of defusing tension is a stranger to him and an interruption to whatever point he’s making at the time.

Finally, this man has zero interest in being liked or popular, (which, paradoxically, is an unfailing route to both). 

At a time when the daily happiness and self-esteem of millions are bolstered by being liked online by strangers, at a time when — in Ireland — it’s nearly possible to get an award for being able to walk on two legs rather than four, Fr Peter McVerry is an outlier, unbothered about popularity and unmoved by his own fame.

Significantly, he is also an outlier in avoiding the public guilt-by-association applied to many of his male and female peers in religious congregations in the last 50 years.

You may think the Catholic Church has been a malign force in Irish life, and its officer class collectively beneath contempt, but Fr Peter is up there with Sr Stan, getting a free pass permitting them to negotiate their way through that contempt, untouched, untainted.

Creation of a housing behemoth

Nobody who knew him 40 years ago expected him to create a housing behemoth, but he did, and that body, along with other non-profits, has changed and improved the lives of people without homes over several decades.

The Peter McVerry Trust is the creation of a man with an unremitting sense of responsibility and a capacity to be IM-possible while setting out to fulfill his self-imposed responsibilities. 

Ireland loves mavericks who can bulldoze their way through bureaucracy, and Fr Peter McVerry is arguably the definitive example of such a maverick.

He certainly qualifies for saintliness, as defined by Robert Bolt’s character, the Common Man, in the play A Man for All Seasons:

“From his willful indifference to realities which were obvious to quite ordinary contemporaries, it seems all too probable that he had it…”

Down the decades, no politician with even a rudimentary sense of self-preservation took Fr Peter McVerry on. 

He was one of those figures so clothed in public admiration as to be unassailable.

Hands-off reverence accorded to McVerry

But the self-protectiveness of politicians has been, down the years, matched by the hands-off reverence accorded the priest by the media. 

Mainstream media has treated him with a pally respect rarely accorded to a member of the clergy, especially one on the board of, and board secretary to, a body with a billion euro budget.

It may be time to question this reverence. To do so is not to question Fr McVerry’s idealism, passion for society’s outliers or personal integrity. 

It is to look at why the trust set up in his name has required a €15m state bailout having been revealed to have suffered — in Matt Cooper’s words — “major failures of corporate governance”.

Others working in related fields have believed for some time that the Peter McVerry Trust, in tendering for publicly funded work, pitched low, thus excluding competition while furthering their own growth to a point where they became the biggest non-profit social housing provider, almost “too big to fail”.

Muttering from other bodies has been just that — muttering, because although Fr McVerry was not involved in the management of the eponymous trust, his personal brand — for perhaps too long — was implicit protection against criticism of the entity.

When, very recently, he resigned as secretary to the board of the trust, the same respectful acceptance was accorded his explanation, which was he’d been “secretary of the trust since it was founded, which goes back a long, long time, and the regulators have asked that we just simply rotate the role”. 

A social housing development built by the Peter McVerry Trust in Ravenswood, Co Dublin, in 2019. 

He was, he said, quite happy with this. It had, he claimed, nothing to do with the bailout.

“The rotation of secretary and the rotation of the board is a standard procedure in all charities.”

Correct. So why had he held the role for 40 years?

“I’m around 24 hours, seven days a week. I sign documents, whereas other secretaries may be on holidays, or may be tied up in other ways, and may not be as readily available.

“That was the reason I have been secretary for so long, but the regulators have asked, and we agreed, that we would rotate the role. It’s as simple as that.”

Well, no it’s not. The role is decidedly not just about being admirably available to sign stuff.

Wide-ranging role of secretary

The Institute of Public Administration describes the board secretary as having a “key but often under-appreciated role in corporate governance … the secretary can help ensure the smooth and effective functioning of the board and its committees; timely information flows between the executive and board, and vice versa; the development, management and review of governance policies and procedures; and act as a sounding board and adviser to the chairperson, board and senior management team on governance matters.”

If Fr Peter McVerry was providing all of the above, why did he talk only about the ability to sign documents on demand? And why has the trust experienced corporate governance failures?

Finally comes the contradiction within his most recent Newstalk interview, where he explained the commonsense of moving people off charity boards after a time, to let “new blood” in.

In that “new blood” context, it’s difficult to understand why Fr McVerry — after four decades and despite resigning as secretary — continues to stay on the board of the trust.