THE Society of St Vincent de Paul last night confirmed that £185,000 which it had invested with Dublin broker, Mr Tony Taylor, had gone missing.
The money had been earmarked for an indoor play centre in a home which the society uses for summer holidays for less well off children from the greater Dublin region.
"That project will now have to be put on hold," said the society's Dublin regional president, Mr Larry Tuomey.
The money was part of a bequest of around £0.5 million which the society got from an individual, with the condition that it be spent on an ongoing modernisation programme at Sunshine House, Balbriggan, Co Dublin.
On August 6th, his last day at his Dublin office, investment broker Mr Tony Taylor told a member of staff to delete certain client files, believed to be four or five in number. The £185,000 Vincent de Paul file was among those deleted.
The member of staff who carried out the instruction was later able to tell the authorities, from memory, details of the accounts including their total value, which was £844,152.
Mr Tuomey said it had "not been presented to us that Mr Taylor was handling the account personally, it was always presented to us as being by the group. We had a meeting with staff in his office about the money".
The money was given to Mr Taylor to invest after the broker made a presentation to the group which manages the Sunshine Fund, the fund used to run Sunshine House.
"At that time he was one of the leading investment fund managers in the country," Mr Tuomey said. "We were getting a satisfactory return."
It may have been a former employee of Mr Taylor's, who was active with the society, who brought about the introduction.
Sunshine House takes around 2,500 children aged between seven and 10 years from the greater Dublin area, during the period from the end of April to the beginning of October.
The indoor facilities which were to be built with the money invested with Mr Taylor, were to give the children somewhere to play when it was raining.
The centre costs around £150,000 per annum to run. This money is raised at an annual church gate collection, held on Palm Sunday, as well as from subscriptions and donations.
"Public monies donated to the society for its work among the disadvantaged are consistently expended on an ongoing basis in response to growing demand," the society said in a statement.
Also, yesterday, the Minister of State for commerce, science and technology, Mr Rabbitte, said he was aware of media reports that Mr Taylor had handled money for a criminal linked to the murder of journalist, Veronica Guerin. He said he had no information about any such connection.
