St John of God charity spend €23K on luxury trip despite closing Kildare disability centre due to lack of funding

The St John of God order is coming under fire after it was revealed that the charity spent more than €23,000 on sending six members of staff to Orlando earlier this month.

The revelations will stick in the throat of many people in Kildare following on from the closure of the St Raphael's centre in Celbridge back in February. The centre dealt with people with disabilities, but a damning report from HIQA resulted in its closure due to residents not having a satisfactory quality of life.

Residents in the centre were sent to be during the summer by 7pm due to a shortage of staff, according to the report, while it was also noted that some residents were walking around only half-clothed. A lack of funding was given as the reason for the poor conditions in St Raphael's.

There were a number of distressing revelations in that report, though the Celbridge centre was just one of a number of centres ran by the St John of God charity that has come under fire. Centres in Louth, Kerry and Dublin have all been in the news in the past for a variety of different reasons that reflect badly on the charity.

The trip to Orlando saw six top executives from the order attend the 2016 Catholic Health Assembly at the four-star JW Marriott Grand Lakes Hotel at the beginning of June. According to a lengthy report in the Mail on Sunday, the trip came at the expense of the taxpayer, as the order is mostly funded by the State. They reportedly receive €125 million of its €150 million income a year from the state.

Two members of the management team from the St Raphael's centre were reportedly on the trip to Orlando, despite being in head of services' roles during the period when living conditions at the Kildare home were appalling.

'This is particularly relevant to the St John of God Order, where there is transfer of governance from the brothers to our lay leadership,' a spokesman for St John of God is quoted as saying in the Mail on Sunday report.

'The provincial [Brother Donatus] wants to ensure that leadership succession, which is critical into the future, is informed by best practice in this area from the experience of Catholic Organisations in the US.

'It provided learning opportunities to engage with other Catholic healthcare organisations, who have developed best practice in the formation of lay leadership.