The High Court has permitted Wilson’s Hospital School to serve legal papers on teacher Enoch Burke seeking his return to prison after he allegedly breached an order not to trespass there one day after his release from prison.
On Wednesday, a judge said he should be released to prepare for a case launched against an appeals body due to review his dismissal from the Westmeath school.
Speaking to journalists, supporters and protesters gathered outside the school on Thursday morning, Mr Burke said: “I’m coming here to do a day’s work, that’s what I’ve always done.
“I should never have been in prison in the first place. This is my workplace. This is where I teach.”
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Mr Justice Brian Cregan had on Wednesday warned Mr Burke that the court order preventing his trespass remained in force. But Mr Burke told the judge then that he had every intention of returning to his “place of work” upon release.
On Thursday, the High Court was told Mr Burke had passed through the gates of the school.
Mr Justice Brian Cregan granted barrister Rosemary Mallon, for the school, permission to serve papers on Mr Burke, seeking his atachment and committal to prison.
She said he had returned to the school and passed the gates. “There is a security man there and there is another problem as there were quite a number of protesters who also passed into the school premises,” she said.
The judge said he had been reflecting on the matter overnight and it appeared the school might have to bring a fresh motion to attach and commit Mr Burke to prison again.
Mr Burke had been in jail since late November for breaches of a court order directing him not to trespass at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath, where he worked as a teacher.
Last week, he sought a temporary injunction against a disciplinary appeals body tasked with reviewing his dismissal from the school.
Before the High Court on Wednesday, Mr Justice Brian Cregan said Mr Burke had raised “substantive” and “credible” issues in papers prepared against the Disciplinary Appeals Panel.
The judge said he was directing that Mr Burke be released from prison for “one reason and one reason only”, in the interest of the administration of justice and so that he has time to prepare for his case against the appeals panel.
The judge had said the decision was being made on the basis that he would not attend the school and he would be brought back to prison if he did.
Mr Burke rejected the reasons given by the judge for his release when he appeared before the court via video-link and as he walked out of Mountjoy Prison on Wednesday.
He repeated his comments again at the school gates on Thursday and in a tirade against the Irish judicial system and media he accused the “judges in this country” of “telling lies”.
He said his case was an “insult from beginning to end” to the “institutions of our State” and a “disgrace”.
He said he was brought to court because he “simply could not” address a pupil using the pronoun “they”, saying it was “anti-Christian, but as well as that, it is nonsense”.
Mr Burke has already spent more than 560 days in prison, over different periods over the last three years since he was dismissed over his conduct following a refusal to obey a direction from the then school principal to call a transgender pupil by a new name and by the they/them pronoun. Each time he has been jailed it has been as result of breach of an order not to trespass on the grounds. – Additional reporting: PA
