Principal stole over €100k from school to feed gambling addiction

One-month Teaching Council suspension for principal as conduct 'incompatible with teaching'

After pleading guilty to several charges arising from the theft, the teacher received a six-year prison sentence with four-and-a-half years suspended. He served 10 months of the sentence before he was released. Stock picture

A principal who stole over €100,000 from his school while in the throes of a gambling addiction has had his one-month suspension by the Teaching Council confirmed by the High Court.

After pleading guilty to several charges arising from the theft, the teacher received a six-year prison sentence with four-and-a-half years suspended. He served 10 months of the sentence before he was released.

Following his conviction, a Teaching Council disciplinary panel agreed an appropriate sanction was to suspend the teacher’s registration with the council for one month. His retention on the register should be subject to certain conditions, the panel also recommended.

In a judgment published on Friday, High Court president David Barniville confirmed the sanction after applying the relevant legal test — that is, there was no “good reason” not to confirm the sanction.

The teacher cannot be identified, by order of the court.

Outlining the reasons for its recommended sanction, the panel said the teacher’s offending was “serious”, given it consisted of him stealing money from a school of which he was the principal. The panel said the conduct was dishonest and affected the school and its pupils.

The panel also outlined aggravating factors in the case. It noted that the teacher stole the school credit card and forged the signature of the chairperson of the school’s board of management on cheques. The thefts were premeditated and deliberate, the panel said.

The offending involved some 381 instances of theft, occurring over a two-year period. The theft deprived the school of funds intended for resources and planned infrastructure, including a new school building and/or an astro turf pitch, the panel noted.

The panel said this conduct was “incompatible with teaching”, and had it not been for mitigating factors, the recommended sanction would have been removal from the Teaching Council register.

Those mitigating factors included the fact the teacher’s offending was directly linked to his gambling addiction.

“[T]he theft was carried out to feed the [teacher’s] addiction, and that the theft was an integral part of the disease,” the panel said, according to Mr Justice Barniville’s judgment.

The panel noted that the teacher made – and continues to make – repayments to the school. The teacher demonstrated remorse for his actions, and had partaken in rehabilitation to tackle his addiction.

The judge, in confirming the sanction, said the key mitigating factor in the case was the teacher’s gambling addiction.

“To my mind, that is a very significant factor in this case and it is one that persuades me that the sanction, which on the face of it appears very lenient, is in fact a sanction which the panel was entitled reasonably to impose,” the judge said.