Enoch Burke racks up €3,500 in fines after showing up to school six days after sacking

Last Thursday he was informed by a judge that he would be fined €700 a day if he continued to disobey a court order to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School in Multyfarnham.

He was given a deadline of 2pm on Friday to obey the order.

Mr Burke has continued to show up at the school since his suspension last August in a row over his refusal to agree to call a trans student by their preferred name and pronouns.

The school then took a court action against him and he spent 108 days in prison for contempt of court when he refused to obey the ruling to stay away from the education facility.

Mr Justice Brian O’Moore ordered his release from prison just before Christmas, commenting that Mr Burke was exploiting his imprisonment.

When Mr Burke started turning up at the school again after the Christmas holidays the school applied to have his assets sequestered, but Judge O’Moore decided on the imposition of the €700-a-day fine instead.

That means that as of last night Mr Burke had racked up €3,500 in fines.

He was arrested for trespass on Tuesday last week when he turned up at the school following his sacking the week previously following a disciplinary hearing and when he was released from garda questioning he returned to the school again.

A file is being sent to the DPP on the trespass matter, and Mr Burke continues to turn up and spends the day outside the school because he is not allowed entry to the building.

Mr Burke says he has been wrongly dismissed and is being punished for his religious beliefs and his refusal to accept transgenderism.

Leaving the school yesterday Mr Burke had nothing to say. While on previous days he walked to the gate and delivered a statement before getting into the waiting car being driven by his father, he instead organised his father to collect him at the school building and was then driven out the gate.

On Monday as he left the school he had described as “scurrilous” the accusation by Judge O’Moore that he “exploited” his imprisonment for contempt of court.

He said he was in a 12ft by 6ft cell for 108 days, behind a locked door, with one to two six-minute phone calls a day and one to two visits a week.

“How do you exploit a situation like that? But yet the judge could say that and could get away with it. Judge O’Moore needs to explain to the public how I was exploiting my imprisonment.

"Basically, if he feels that I was doing something wrong in my imprisonment he should explain that. The truth of the matter is I should never have been in prison,” he said.

Yesterday the High Court allowed the school more time to file changes to its original affidavits on the matter of Mr Burke’s suspension, including corrections as to who attended meetings at the school and whether the principal was present at them or not.