THE HIGH COURT has heard that Enoch Burke could owe almost €270,000 in fines for repeatedly trespassing at Wilson’s Hospital School in recent years.
Judge Brian Cregan this morning invited counsel for the school’s board of management, Rosemary Mallon, to provide an estimate of the number of days Burke had trespassed and how much he owed.
The judge also suggested that he will consider Burke’s ongoing imprisonment and may release him despite his refusal to purge his contempt.
The former teacher has spent more than 700 days in jail for violating a court order to stay away from the school since August 2022.
He has been imprisoned for contempt of court for breaching the order on five separate occasions, but has been released without purging his contempt during school holidays and, in one case, to prepare a legal case.
During periods of release, Burke has continued to show up to the school and different judges have imposed fines on him in an attempt to get him to obey the order to stay away from the school.
In January 2023, Judge Brian O’Moore imposed the first fine on Burke, ordering him to pay €700 for every day that he turned up at the school in breach of the order.
Burke was imprisoned in September 2023 and released at the start of the school holidays the following June, before being imprisoned again when the school returned in September 2024.
In December 2024, Judge David Nolan released Burke from prison and increased the fines to €1,400 a day and then €2,000 a day.
Last September, the court heard that Burke owed more than €225,000 in fines, though he has trespassed at the school on more occasions since.
In the High Court this morning, counsel for the school’s board of management Rosemary Mallon read an affidavit which calculated that Burke now owed more than €450,000 in fines.
She told the court that it was believed Burke had trespassed on 157 days over a four-year period, noting that this was a rough figure and that the school’s board had “erred on the side of conservatism” in its attempts to arrive at the figure.
However, Judge Cregan raised issue with how the fines had been calculated because he said they included weekends and periods when the school was on holidays.
Mallon explained that this was because the calculations were based on the number of days that Burke had refused to purge his contempt, as she believed was the intention of Judge O’Moore when he first imposed the €700 daily fine in January 2023.
“This is a fine, this is a sanction, and it therefore has to be for the number of days Mr Burke has attended the school,” Judge Cregan said.
The judge asked Mallon to re-calculate the figure in a new affidavit for a further hearing next week, before giving his own “rough calculation” of what the figure should be.
He said that in mid-March 2023, Judge O’Moore issued a judgment which calculated the first batch of fines as €23,800, covering a period from 26 January 2023 to 1 March 2023.
Judge Cregan said he was reluctant to vary that amount.
He then estimated that fines between 1 March 2023 to 19 May 2023 should total €55,300 when weekends and school holidays were taken into consideration.
The judge said no fines accumulated between 19 May 2023 and December 2024.
Judge Cregan then said that Judge Nolan increased the fines to €1,400 a day on 15 December 2024.
Burke was in prison at the time that judgment was handed down, and did not breach the court’s order again until the school returned on 6 January 2025.
Judge Cregan estimated that between that date and 18 November 2025, when Burke was imprisoned again, the former teacher had trespassed for 152 days, which he said had accumulated fines totalling €212,800.
Burke was then released early in 2026 to prepare a legal case against the Disciplinary Appeals Panel that was deciding whether his dismissal by the school was fair.
He attended the school on two days during that period, accumulating fines worth €4,000 following a further order by Judge Nolan last September to increase daily fines to €2,000 a day.
The total level of fines was therefore calculated by Judge Cregan at €268,600, though it was not clear whether the €2,000 daily fines from September were taken into consideration.
Mallon will provide the court with an updated figure when the case returns next week.
In response, Burke, who appeared via video link from Castlerea Prison, said that the “only relevant period of calculation” was the “four long years that the court had remained silent” on his claim that he could not address a transgender pupil by their preferred pronoun due to his religious beliefs.
“We’ve come through three summers, four winters, and five long periods of imprisonment for me,” he told the court.
Judge Cregan told Burke that he had plenty of opportunities to bring a case about his religious beliefs but had yet to do so.
“I keep saying to you, if you want to bring a constitutional case, bring a constitutional case and the court will reply to that,” the judge said.
Possible release
The court also heard that Burke is no longer receiving a salary from the Department of Education and had received his final payslip.
However, the court was told Burke was challenging this.
Judge Cregan also said he is also considering making an order preventing Burke’s mother Martina and siblings Isaac and Ammi from attending court proceedings in person and instead limiting them to remote attendance.
He had previously said he was considering the possibility of making such an order due to their disruptive behaviour in cases involving Enoch.
The judge also offered Burke an opportunity to purge his contempt and agree to stay away from the school, though the former teacher declined to do so.
Judge Cregan told the court that he was nevertheless considering Burke’s ongoing imprisonment and asked Mallon for the school’s position on the matter.
Mallon told the court that the school has no desire to see Burke remain in prison and that it simply wants to function as a school, but that it had a “real apprehension, given Mr Burke’s previous conduct and the fact that he seems to persist with the idea that he remains a teacher” that he would continue to trespass if he was released.
“It’s not an agnostic position; the position of the school is that it does not want a continued trespass,” she said.
“And it appears at this moment in time, that the only way that can be prevented is his imprisonment.”
Judge Cregan said he would reflect on this over the next week and consider whether to release Burke when the case returns, before adjourning the case until next Wednesday.