{"id":177242,"date":"2025-12-05T21:54:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177242\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:54:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:54:06","slug":"insurance-and-legal-bills-skyrocket-in-review-of-wilsons-hospital-school-finances-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177242\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurance and legal bills skyrocket in review of Wilson\u2019s Hospital School finances \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The secondary school at the centre of the controversy surrounding jailed teacher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/enoch-burke\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/enoch-burke\/\">Enoch Burke<\/a> last year appointed a team of management consultants and a firm of financial advisers to review its operations and finances.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This is disclosed in recently filed accounts for Wilson Hospital School Co Ltd which show that the school\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/insurance\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/insurance\/\">insurance<\/a> bill more than doubled in 2024 while its legal and professional bill increased sixfold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The school recorded a surplus of \u20ac67,211 for 2024 and was sitting on an accumulated deficit of \u20ac61,073 at the end of last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The accounts show that the school firm\u2019s insurance bill increased by 112 per cent from \u20ac65,230 to \u20ac138,966 in 2024, while the school\u2019s legal and professional spend increased sixfold from \u20ac47,422 to \u20ac310,651.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The spiralling insurance and professional and legal costs coincided with the school\u2019s ongoing High Court dispute with Mr Burke concerning Mr Burke\u2019s continued contempt of court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Burke is now in his fourth spell behind bars for breaching High Court orders requiring him to stay away from the Co Westmeath school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Burke has now spent more than 520 days in prison and has been fined \u20ac225,000 for contempt of court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">An adjudication hearing on costs associated with the cases was told earlier this week that the school\u2019s insurers have paid the school\u2019s own legal fees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The school is a co-educational day and boarding school.  Last year its revenues increased by 19 per cent from \u20ac3.38 million to \u20ac4.03 million and it recorded a surplus of \u20ac67,211. This followed the school recording a loss in 2023 of \u20ac139,938. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/crime-law\/courts\/2025\/12\/03\/enoch-burke-will-remain-in-jail-for-christmas-judge-says\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Enoch Burke will remain in jail for Christmas, judge saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The biggest driver in the school\u2019s income in 2024 came from its boarding students, where \u2018residential services income\u2019 rose from \u20ac1.7 million to \u20ac2.84 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The school\u2019s expenditure included \u2018bad debts\u2019 of \u20ac289,168.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The accounts made no reference to the Enoch Burke controversy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The company\u2019s cash funds last year increased from \u20ac25,187 to \u20ac170,757.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The secondary school at the centre of the controversy surrounding jailed teacher Enoch Burke last year appointed a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43693,42,5167,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-177242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-enoch-burke","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-insurance","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}