{"id":469563,"date":"2026-05-05T13:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/469563\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T13:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:45:12","slug":"enoch-burke-to-remain-in-prison-after-telling-high-court-he-was-not-trespassing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/469563\/","title":{"rendered":"Enoch Burke to remain in prison after telling High Court he was not trespassing \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke<\/a> has again refused to purge his contempt of a court order banning him from Wilson\u2019s Hospital School, his one-time workplace.<\/p>\n

In May 2023, Judge Alexander Owens ruled the Co Westmeath school validly had suspended Burke from his teaching position, and subsequently ordered that Burke be restrained from attending at the school premises.<\/p>\n

The school suspended \u2013 and later dismissed \u2013 Burke over his conduct towards the then-principal Niamh McShane at a school religious event in June 2022. His dismissal is currently subject to a disciplinary appeals panel (Dap) process.<\/p>\n

The confrontation arose in circumstances where McShane had earlier requested 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 that this request went against his religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Burke has repeatedly breached the judge\u2019s order to stay away from the school, and is incarcerated at Castlerea Prison over this contempt of court. He has spent more than 600 days in separate spells in jail.<\/p>\n

Burke is seeking permission from the Court of Appeal (CoA) to bring a late challenge against Owens\u2019s May 2023 judgment. The CoA reserved judgment in Burke\u2019s application for a late appeal last month.<\/p>\n

Burke\u2019s case came before Judge Brian Cregan on Tuesday to review whether he was willing to purge his contempt of Owens\u2019s orders banning him from the school.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he was willing to purge his contempt, Burke, appearing via video-link, noted that the reasons for his imprisonment are currently before the CoA.<\/p>\n

He repeated his position that he did not believe he should be in prison, claiming McShane\u2019s instruction to use a student\u2019s preferred pronouns had no standing in law.<\/p>\n

He submitted that the position of the Department of Education is that schools cannot be compelled to use a pupil\u2019s preferred pronouns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shouldn\u2019t be in prison, I should be in my classroom, I should be with my students,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n

Burke also stated that a third disciplinary appeals panel convened to hear his challenge to his dismissal from the school had \u201ccrashed\u201d, submitting he was removed from a panel hearing two weeks ago when he objected to the presence of lawyers for the school\u2019s board of management.<\/p>\n

He submitted that the Dap and board of management could not allow a \u201cfair hearing\u201d in this matter. \u201cThe process is rotten at its core,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

When the judge repeated his question asking whether he would purge his contempt, Burke said he had \u201cfaithfully attended\u201d his workplace for eight years, and this was not trespassing.<\/p>\n

The judge said Burke was in breach of Owens\u2019s order and, as of today, it was a valid and lawful order of the High Court.<\/p>\n

The judge said it was clear Burke did not wish to purge his contempt, and adjourned the matter for four weeks.<\/p>\n

The judge said it was open to Burke to purge his contempt at any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke has again refused to purge his contempt of a court order banning him from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,8662,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-469563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-enoch-burke","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-high-court","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116522275825204494","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}