Enoch Burke speaks as though he has 'no free will', says judge

The judge was giving his written judgment on Tuesday about his decision on Monday to order Mr Burke be committed back to Mountjoy Prison for contempt of court for continuing to trespass on the school. File picture: Colin Keegan, Collins, Dublin.

Teacher Enoch Burke speaks as though "he has no free will" and that it was somehow pre-determined that he would return to Wilson's Hospital School after he was released from prison last week, Mr Justice Brian Cregan said on Tuesday.

The judge was giving his written judgment on Tuesday about his decision on Monday to order Mr Burke be committed back to Mountjoy Prison for contempt of court for continuing to trespass on the school.

He said Mr Burke always had a choice and had been given his liberty to work on a new case he is bringing to try and halt a Disciplinary Appeals Panel (DAP) hearing into his dismissal from his employment.

He knew if he went back to the school he would be imprisoned again, he said. 

Most rational and reasonable people would have chosen to stay home and work on their case.

"However, he decided to go out of his way to go back to the school where he is not wanted and to breach the court order again," he said. In those circumstances, the court was left with no option but to imprison him again, he said.

The judge also said cases like this, both on law and facts, are always complex involving constitutional, contract, employment and injunction laws. Mr Burke is a teacher of German and history but has no knowledge of those laws, he said.

Mr Justice Cregan said: "He has demonstrated that lack of knowledge at every hearing before me. Most of his arguments were unstateable. He has followed a disastrous legal strategy from start to finish.

At each stage, instead of learning from his defeats, he has doubled down, leading to heavier defeats.

He had lost every single legal battle, with the exception of succeeding in an objective bias claim against the composition of a previous DAP, he said.

The judge also said he had hoped that on his release last week, Mr Burke would reflect overnight before release on his assertions that he would return to the school, but unfortunately that had not proven to be the case.

Mr Burke, who was once again appearing in court online from Mountjoy, tried to raise the issue of comments made by school principal Noel Cunningham in the Sunday Independent in which he stated Mr Burke's presence did not affect the everyday running of the school which was the happiest place in the world.

Yet Mr Cunningham had "raced up the road to change what he said" in the article for the purposes of an affidavit he filed for Monday's hearing in which he was jailed again, Mr Burke said.

The judge told him that did not form part of the judgment he had given and he only wished to hear his response from an application from Rosemary Mallon BL, for the school, for the costs of the commital hearing.

Following further attempts by Mr Burke to raise the Cunningham affidavit matter, the judge ordered his microphone be muted and said he could see no reason not to award costs against him.

His new case against the DAP will be back in court on February 4.

Mr Burke claims he is in jail because of his opposition to transgenderism and a requirement to call a pupil "they/them" and by a new name. He says this is a breach of his constitutional and religious rights.

The judge said he was in jail for refusal to obey court orders not to trespass on the school following his dismissal for gross misconduct.