Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 20 November 2025
Public Accounts Committee
Exceptional Funding of the Peter McVerry Trust: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Tony O'Brien:
It is a very fair question. What I would say is that you would not contemplate answering the question until you had aired everything that needed to be aired. In the process of today, with the 2023 accounts and some of the information we put into the public domain, if we had contemplated rebranding and had rebranded then, we would have just damaged that brand beyond recognition. So, it is not something we have actively considered. I do have to say, however, that Peter McVerry, whose name is above the door, is an embodiment of the mission of the organisation, so any such consideration would be very careful consideration. The notion of rebranding is way too premature because had we rebranded last week, we would have just damaged that brand. It is a bit like the way some bodies have been rebranded just before they have gone into a crisis and it was a waste of time. It is something we will contemplate as part of a forward-looking strategic review, which we have just initiated, but it is not something that any decision has been made about. It would be a very serious decision to move away from Peter's name given that everything that is done in the organisation is essentially inspired by and is a continuation of his life's work.
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