has since told solicitors for the school\u2019s board of management<\/a> that he does not own the vehicle.<\/p>\nJudge Cregan then said that if someone else owns the car, the question could arise whether that person was \u201caiding and abetting contempt of court\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge therefore asked the board\u2019s solicitors in the High Court today to write to Burke to ask him to disclose the owner\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
If he does not, Judge Cregan said the minister for transport could be joined to the case to determine the owner of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
Burke, who did not attend today\u2019s hearing, has been the subject of a permanent injunction preventing him from entering the Co Westmeath school\u2019s grounds.<\/p>\n
Last month, Cregan ordered his arrest and committal to prison for breaching that order. The judge subsequently amended the order so that Burke would face arrest if he appeared at or within 100 metres of the school.<\/p>\n
Burke has spent more than 700 days in prison across five periods of imprisonment for contempt of court. He was most recently released in July after the school year ended.<\/p>\n
He maintains that his dispute with the school arises from his religious opposition to an instruction to address a transgender student by their preferred pronouns.<\/p>\n
Judges have repeatedly said his imprisonment concerns his refusal to obey court orders to stay away from the school.\n<\/p>\n
Car ownership<\/p>\n
Mallon told the court today that Burke had not attended the school since last week\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n
She said that, after the updated arrest order was provided to the superintendent at Mullingar garda station, he sought clarification on whether the 100-metre limit referred to the school building or its grounds.<\/p>\n
Cregan said Burke could be arrested and committed to prison if he trespassed on the grounds, appeared at the front gate or came within 100 metres of the school gate.<\/p>\n
The court then considered the earlier order to seize the vehicle used to bring Burke to Wilson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Cregan said: \u201cThere is probably a process that has to be gone through before the court lifts any stay on the order of sequestration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Niall \u00d3 hUiginn, counsel for receiver Miles Kirby, said the National Vehicle and Driver File was held by the Department of Transport, but that only a limited number of entities were entitled to obtain information from it.<\/p>\n
He said Kirby was willing to be appointed as a sequestrator, but the judge said that might not be necessary at this stage.<\/p>\n
Cregan said identifying the car\u2019s owner would be the first step and that the next question would be whether that person was aiding and abetting contempt of court, followed by a hearing to determine that issue.<\/p>\n
If a finding was made, the court would then have to consider what should happen, he said.<\/p>\n
If a fine was imposed and remained unpaid, the car might need to be seized.<\/p>\n
Cregan said the options for identifying the owner included asking Burke directly or joining the minister for transport to the case and potentially seeking an order for disclosure of the information.<\/p>\n
He asked the board\u2019s solicitors to write to Burke first. If the information was not provided, he said, the department would be joined to the case.<\/p>\n
Payment and costs<\/p>\n
The court also heard that a \u20ac433 payment due to Burke under a local bargaining agreement had been sent to the receiver.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the Department of Education said the small amount could be passed to the Courts Fines Office.<\/p>\n
Cregan also addressed the receiver\u2019s costs, saying they should be paid by the Courts Fines Office because the receiver had been appointed by the court.<\/p>\n
The court heard that the receiver\u2019s professional fees amounted to \u20ac12,300.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 hUiginn initially indicated that these had been paid, but clarified before the hearing ended that they had not.<\/p>\n
A separate bill of costs is to be prepared, and the court will receive an update when the case returns on 19 November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE HIGH COURT has asked Enoch Burke to identify the owner of a car used to bring him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127032,54,43693,73,61,60,43,283271,67221],"class_list":["post-675876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-brian-cregan","tag-courts","tag-enoch-burke","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rosemary-mallon","tag-the-burkes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675876","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=675876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}