{"id":501674,"date":"2026-06-16T01:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/501674\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T01:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:31:16","slug":"enoch-burke-claims-teaching-council-inquiry-biased-as-he-seeks-high-court-injunction-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/501674\/","title":{"rendered":"Enoch Burke claims Teaching Council inquiry biased as he seeks High Court injunction \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke<\/a> is asking the High Court<\/a> to halt a Teaching Council<\/a> inquiry into allegations against him, claiming the inquiry panel is biased.<\/p>\n

A fitness to teach inquiry is scheduled to start on Wednesday to consider allegations of professional misconduct against Burke. <\/p>\n

The allegations in the main arise from complaints relating to Burke\u2019s trespassing at his one-time workplace, Wilson\u2019s Hospital School, in breach of court orders. <\/p>\n

The school suspended and later dismissed Burke over his conduct towards then-principal Niamh McShane at a school religious event in June 2022. The confrontation arose in circumstances where McShane had earlier directed teachers to address a student by a new name and with the pronouns \u201cthey\u201d and \u201cthem\u201d.<\/p>\n

Burke, an evangelical Christian, has maintained this request went against his religious beliefs. He has repeatedly breached the order to stay away from the school. <\/p>\n

He is now incarcerated over this contempt of court and has spent more than 700 days in jail over separate spells. Burke was formally dismissed from his role at the Co Westmeath<\/a> school last month.<\/p>\n

Appearing in person before Judge Brian Cregan on Monday, Burke said he was seeking an interim injunction stopping the scheduled fitness to teach inquiry hearing from going ahead. <\/p>\n

He is seeking the injunction against the three members of inquiry panel. <\/p>\n

Burke submitted that he met the requirements for the granting of an interim injunction, including that his case against the inquiry panel raises a fair issue to be tried. <\/p>\n

He claimed that Andy Pike, the inquiry chair, was biased and \u201ccannot approach this inquiry from an objective standpoint\u201d. Burke claimed Pike had promoted social media posts relating to St Patrick\u2019s Day floats that \u201cmocked and parodied\u201d him. <\/p>\n

Burke submitted the panel had unfairly \u201ccircumscribed\u201d the issues to be considered by the inquiry. He also submitted that a \u201clegal assessor\u201d engaged by the inquiry, senior counsel Lorna Lynch, had \u201coverstepped and exceeded her role\u201d in preliminary hearings held by the inquiry.<\/p>\n

Burke also raised issue with the panel\u2019s acceding to a \u201ckey witness\u201d giving evidence anonymously. Burke said no reason was provided for the granting of anonymity to John Galligan, a former deputy principal at Wilson\u2019s Hospital School.<\/p>\n

The judge gave permission to Burke to serve his proceedings on the inquiry panel members. He directed that the case return on Tuesday, when his application for an interim injunction will be determined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke is asking the High Court to halt a Teaching Council inquiry into allegations against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43693,42,73,43,40696,40,38,41,39,59],"class_list":["post-501674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-enoch-burke","tag-headlines","tag-high-court","tag-news","tag-teaching-council","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-westmeath"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501674","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=501674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}