When the 'People Directory' has been disabled, any redirects to the the dashboard (e.g. by clicking on the 'People' link within the breadcrumbs when viewing a profile) result in the dashboard being displayed with the default site welcome message. This occurs even in the case where a custom site welcome message has been specified.

The PeopleDirectoryAction doBrowse() method returns an ERROR result when the People Directory has been disabled. The dashboard rendering will attempt to display the custom site welcome message - but this object is not available on the PeopleDirectoryAction and hence reverts to the default message.