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Enoch Burke back at school he was sacked from for new term, as fines pass €148,000

As the new term began today, Mr Burke arrived and took up position in a corridor in the school.

Today at 10:03

Former teacher Enoch Burke has returned to the school that sacked him in what is seen as a pledge to continue his protest at his dismissal.

As the new term began today, Mr Burke arrived and took up position in a corridor in the school.

A statement from a family spokesperson said Enoch “will not endorse an ideology which he as a Christian disagrees with and which wil have serious repercussions for young people”.

“He has a right to his religious beliefs and believes it is wrong that he is being denied access to his place of work,” it added.

Mr Burke’s dispute with Wilson’s Hospital school in Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath had its roots in a request by the former principal, Ms Niamh McShane, in May of last year that teachers call a transgender child by a new name and by their preferred pronouns.

Burke, an evangelical Christian, objected and publicly challenged Ms McShane at a chapel service and after a school dinner.

These events prompted the principal to compile a report for the board of management, which ultimately decided to put Mr Burke on paid administrative leave on August 22 last year.

Despite being suspended, the teacher continued to show up “for work”, even when the school secured a court order restraining him from doing so.

He spent 108 days in prison for contempt of court before being released just before last Christmas despite not purging his contempt, but resumed his almost daily visits to the school following his release.

Even after being arrested for trespass in January Burke continued to turn up at the school, prompting the High Court to issue him with a daily €700 fine for every day he remained in contempt of court by turning up at Wilson’s Hospital.

Gardaí subsequently prepared a file on the trespass matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), but the Irish Independent has learned there will be no prosecution.

The daily fines on the contempt matter are still accumulating however, and Mr Burke’s fines now total €148,400. On top of that he has been ordered by the High Court to pay €15,000 in damages for trespass, and is facing a six-figure legal bill, as the court awarded the school its legal costs in injunctions proceedings.

In May the High Court found Wilson’s Hospital School behaved lawfully when it suspended Burke in August of last year.

Mr Justice Alexander Owens also dismissed a counterclaim the teacher had against the school in which he sought declarations that the disciplinary process against him was an unlawful interference with his constitutional rights.

The teacher has also claimed that a report prepared by Niamh McShane was compiled in breach of natural justice and otherwise than in accordance with an administrative circular governing disciplinary sanctions.

The ruling came after a four-day hearing in March during which Mr Burke ended up being excluded from the courtroom for being “disorderly and in persistent contempt” of court.

He is separately appealing his sacking to a Disciplinary Appeals Panel.

That appeal was due to be heard earlier this year but Burke took a High Court action seeking the removal of one of the members of the panel, Kieran Christie, with Burke claiming he is a “promoter of transgenderism” and could not have an unbiased opinion as a result. Mr Christie has strongly denied the claims and says Mr Burke has wrongly based his claim of bias from the fact that Mr Christie has accepted the law of the land on gender recognition. Judgment is pending on his application.

On the last day of term in May, Mr Burke did not rule out returning to Wilson’s Hospital School this term and described the fines he has racked-up for contempt of court as ‘oppression’.

“I’m here standing outside the school. I’ve been out here since January, I’ve been out here in freezing conditions, I’ve been out here in rain and sleet, and it’s because I have rights.

“No judge has the prerogative, or no principal, or anybody else, to take those rights away,” he told Independent.ie at the time.

The judge who made the award of costs to the school, Mr Justice Alexander Owens, also made an order restraining Mr Burke from trespassing on the premises of the school in Multyfarnham, but said that the German and History teacher was not prevented from attending outside the school gates.