Annual Report 2021

2021 Annual Report – Learning for Life

The Board of Trustees are pleased to publish the Iveagh Trust’s Annual Report for 2021.

Entitled “Learning for Life”, 2021 saw that spirit of the Bayno rekindled as the Trust provided a range of classes delivered by qualified tutors, covering everything from computer literacy to local history, personal development and story-telling – free of charge to anyone in the community, with generous support from the Mitigating Against Educational Disadvantage Fund.

Our communities, galvanised through Covid-19, continued to strengthen with Kevin Street residents and staff in particular coming together to create a community garden that has not just transformed the estate visually, but become a catalyst – for neighbours to connect with and encourage each other, forming friendships that have strengthened the threads of the wider Iveagh Trust community.

28 new homes were added at Millers Glen, Swords, as we welcomed our newest residents to the Iveagh Trust, just before Christmas.  Caroline Swan reminds us of the transformative impact of finding a secure, affordable home – as she says herself “it’s been utterly life changing”.

2021 was also a momentous year for the Trust with a number of retirements that left us with big shoes to fill, the length of expertise and memory that the Trust has to make up can be seen in the amount of service in those who retired: Martin O’Reilly, Deputy Hostel Manager (37 years); Patsy Byrne, Housekeeper (24 years); Paul Harrison, Director of Finance (16 years); Christine Parkes, Finance Assistant (5 years).

Alongside all of the hard work across the estates, hostel and head office to keep the Trust going day-to-day, we also spent some time during the year to consider what it is that makes the Iveagh Trust special? As the Trust continues to grow and evolve, we recognise the need to capture and preserve all that is good in what we do and to try to define what those of us who work and live here recognise as the Iveagh Trust “ethos”.

We came up with some questions to ask ourselves:

Is it caring?

Is it courteous?

Is it professional?

Is it helping the individual?

Is it helping the community?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then there isn’t much need for long and windy corporate mission documents and how-to manuals. These are the things we aspire to in our dealings with residents, each other and all our partner organisations and the 2021 Annual Report marks the beginning of wider communication of these important questions – that in many ways define the Trust’s ethos.