Enoch Burke has been removed from the High Court, with a judge in his case against a disciplinary body ordering garda\u00ed to return him to Mountjoy Prison, where the proceedings are due to resume via videolink.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke had sought a temporary injunction against a Disciplinary Appeals Panel (DAP) body that was reviewing the decision to dismiss him from Wilson’s Hospital School.<\/p>\n
The hearing was called to discuss the process following two resignations from the DAP and whether the board of management of Wilson’s Hospital School could join the proceedings as a notice party.<\/p>\n
At the outset, Mr Justice Brian Cregan warned Mr Burke that he would direct garda\u00ed to return him to Mountjoy Prison if he strayed beyond behaviour that the court deemed acceptable.<\/p>\n
He has been imprisoned at Mountjoy Prison over contempt of court relating to breaches of orders not to trespass at the school.<\/p>\n
As Mr Burke interjected while Rosemary Mallon, the barrister for the board of management, was outlining proposals to constitute a new DAP, the judge ordered him to sit down.<\/p>\n
When he did not sit down, Mr Justice Cregan directed gardai to return him to Mountjoy Prison amid opposition from members of his family.<\/p>\n
As he was being escorted by garda\u00ed, Mr Burke accused the court of an “abuse of power” and said: “This is absolutely disgraceful, I have a right to justice.”<\/p>\n
His mother, Martina, questioned why Ms Mallon was allowed to speak and told the barrister she was a “foreign presence” in the court.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke’s sister, Ammi, said that Geraldine O’Brien, the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) representative on the DAP, was still sitting on the panel, which the family said was still in existence.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke’s mother and sister were also escorted out of the court by garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
He said it was “disgraceful to drag my family out of court”.<\/p>\n
The long-running legal dispute between the board of management of the Co Westmeath school and Mr Burke stems from incidents over a request in 2022 from the school’s then-principal to address a student by a new name and pronoun.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke, an Evangelical Christian who taught German and history at the school, has repeatedly argued that the direction was unconstitutional and went against his right to express his religious beliefs.<\/p>\n
Earlier in today’s proceedings, Mr Burke had argued that Ms Mallon and the board of management should not be present nor added as a notice party in his dispute with the DAP.<\/p>\n
He said he “absolutely” objected to them being added to proceedings, arguing that solicitors for the school had engaged in “lying” and “prevarication”.<\/p>\n
He accused Ms Mallon of telling a “very serious lie” that his dismissal had nothing to do with his personal views.<\/p>\n
“They have no business being here today.”<\/p>\n
He added: “They are a foreign presence in the court this morning.”<\/p>\n
Ms Mallon told the court she did not intend to “deal with the personalised attacks” against the legal representatives.<\/p>\n
Mr Justice Cregan replied: “Nor should you.”<\/p>\n
Ms Mallon argued that there was no prejudice against Mr Burke about the board of management being added as a notice party, and that her clients would be “impacted by the outcome of the proceedings” at the DAP.<\/p>\n
She said Mr Burke was still on the payroll of the Department of Education.<\/p>\n
She noted that Mr Burke had objections to Ms O’Brien and the ASTI, and said the board of management had put forward proposals that a new DAP could be formed with a representative of the Teachers Union of Ireland instead or with, his agreement, a representative from an independent body such as the Law Society, Bar Council or the Irish Congress of Trade Unions due to the “exceptional circumstances” in the case.<\/p>\n
Ms Mallon was reading from a letter that had been sent to Mr Burke and he objected to this being read out in court.<\/p>\n
It was at this point that Mr Burke did not follow Mr Justice Cregan’s order for him to sit down and he was returned to Mountjoy Prison.<\/p>\n
The proceedings are scheduled to resume with Mr Burke attending via videolink this afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enoch Burke has been removed from the High Court, with a judge in his case against a disciplinary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-308084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308084","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=308084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}