{"id":551094,"date":"2026-07-15T14:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T14:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/551094\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T14:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T14:33:10","slug":"enoch-burke-owes-e208000-in-fines-arising-from-wilsons-hospital-school-dispute-court-rules-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/551094\/","title":{"rendered":"Enoch Burke owes \u20ac208,000 in fines arising from Wilson\u2019s Hospital School dispute, court rules \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Schoolteacher Enoch Burke<\/a> owes more than \u20ac208,000 in fines arising from his breach of High Court<\/a> orders banning him from his former place of work. <\/p>\n

Judge Brian Cregan on Wednesday issued a judgment calculating outstanding fines owed by Burke, accrued during his four-year-long dispute with Wilson\u2019s Hospital School in Co Westmeath<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Burke was ordered by the court not to trespass at the school in May 2023 after it held the school had validly suspended him from his teaching post. <\/p>\n

Throughout the court proceedings, several judges imposed fines on Burke at varying daily rates for every day he trespassed at the school.<\/p>\n

In his judgment, Cregan said the total fines accrued by Burke amounted to \u20ac273,200. <\/p>\n

Burke has paid \u20ac64,931 in fines, although not voluntarily; following further court orders, a receiver was appointed over Burke\u2019s salary, and separately, more than \u20ac40,000 was seized from his bank account.<\/p>\n

The total fines outstanding stands at \u20ac208,268, the judge held. He said Burke has \u201cpaid a very heavy price\u201d for his refusal to obey court orders. <\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s Hospital School suspended and later dismissed Burke over his conduct towards then-principal Niamh McShane at a school religious event in June 2022.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When Burke continued to trespass at the school following his suspension, the school sought court orders banning him from the premises.<\/p>\n

Burke has continuously breached the order banning him from the school. <\/p>\n

He has spent more than 700 days in prison in separate spells arising from his contempt of the court order banning him from the school.<\/p>\n

Cregan recently ordered Burke\u2019s release from Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon, despite his refusal to give a court undertaking not to trespass at the school. <\/p>\n

The judge ordered the release for reasons including the \u201cmaterial change\u201d in circumstances arising from the refusal of Burke\u2019s appeal against his dismissal from the school for gross misconduct. Burke is challenging the refusal of his appeal.<\/p>\n

In Wednesday\u2019s judgment, the judge said he had concerns about the proportionality of the fines relative to Burke\u2019s income as a teacher. <\/p>\n

However, the judge noted that Burke has refused to provide information on his assets, leaving the court unable to consider whether it should reduce the fines. <\/p>\n

The judge said Burke \u201chas been imprisoned for over 700 days; he has been fined over \u20ac273,000 (of which he has paid almost \u20ac65,000); he is also facing the enormous legal costs of the school (which I am told run into many hundreds of thousands of euro); and he is facing a disciplinary hearing before the Teaching Council. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, he has wasted 700 days of his life in prison, his financial position has been undermined and his reputation as a teacher damaged,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Schoolteacher Enoch Burke owes more than \u20ac208,000 in fines arising from his breach of High Court orders banning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43693,73,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-551094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-enoch-burke","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551094","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=551094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}