Enoch Burke is due to be arrested and sent to prison yet again after the former teacher turned up at Wilson’s Hospital School on Thursday and Friday.
It comes as Burke defied the court order to stay away from the school less than 24 hours after being released from Mountjoy Prison on Wednesday.
A High Court judge ordered that the teacher should be released from jail to allow preparations for a case launched against an appeals body due to review his dismissal from the Co Westmeath school.
Rosemary Mallon, a barrister representing the school’s board of management, told the court Mr Burke had trespassed again on Friday morning.
Mr Burke did not appear in court and Ms Mallon said a secretary for Mason Hayes and Curran had confirmed she had emailed him, at his personal address, about the hearing and had not received a ‘bounce back’.
Ms Mallon said Mr Burke’s presence at the school had caused an ‘unprecedented and significant impact on the work of the school’.
She said the school’s principal Noel Cunningham had to rearrange security at short notice, liaise with the security, address issues in the school which arose from students, parents and teachers dealing with protesters and contact the school’s solicitors at short notice.
WHO ARE THE BURKES?
Hailing from Co Mayo, the Burkes are a highly educated, Evangelical Christian family led by matriarch Martina and father Seán.
The 10 children were all home-schooled by their mother, who is a qualified teacher, and enjoyed academic success, with all of them scoring over 520 points in the Leaving Cert exams and going on to graduate with First Class Honours from the University of Galway/NUIG.
PROTESTS, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, AND NUIG
The family would regularly protest against same-sex marriage and civil partnerships, going back as far as 2008, with their protests including linking homosexuality to incest and paedophilia.
Four of the siblings, who were members of NUIG’s Christian Union Society and held all four officers positions, campaigned against NUIG’s support of same-sex marriage ahead of the 2015 referendum, and against NUIG’s referendum to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) – the latter of which saw them banned from the university’s societies for life, after fliers they printed had the university’s logo on it, which the Society Co-ordination Group (USCG) called a misrepresentation of endorsement.
The four siblings, Isaac, Kezia, Ammi and Enoch, sued the university for religious discrimination, and while the USCG revoked the lifetime ban and were criticised for an ‘extraordinary and inexcusable’ lack of knowledge on fair or proper procedures, the claim that they were being discriminated against on religious grounds was rejected.
UNLAWFUL DISMISSAL, PREDICTED GRADES AND NPHET
Well before the Wilson’s Hospital School incident, the Burkes were in the news several times over the news, albeit in a reduced capacity to the continuous rolling coverage surrounding Enoch.
In 2019, then law graduate Ammi was fired from law firm Arthur Cox, with the family picketing the firm’s offices. While Ammi claimed that she was dismissed over a disagreement with a partner at the firm, the firm said that there was a breakdown between three of its senior partners and her.
Things came to a head in 2023 during the unfair dismissal case, when the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) threw the case out over Ammi and her mother Martina’s behaviour, with the Burke matriarch allegedly repeatedly interrupting and ‘berating’ the adjudicator.
Journalism graduate and sibling Jemima also rose to prominence while questioning then Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan, with her gaining access to the press conference by claiming to be with The Western People – a newspaper in Galway that hasn’t existed for nearly 100 years.
Jemima and her brother Josiah, as well as their mother, were also removed from an inquest into a child’s death after making unfounded claims about the girl’s hospital treatment, which caused distress to the girl’s bereaved families.
Simeon Burke, who was forcibly removed from court alongside his sister and brother at Enoch’s various court hearings, is a law graduate, but was unable to find a ‘pupilage’ (apprenticeship) from a senior barrister on the master list. He was eventually taken on by Ciara Davin, BL.
Youngest member Elijah first rose to prominence after successfully challenging then Minister for Education Norma Foley after she refused to grant him calculated grades during the COVID-19 pandemic, as his mother would be awarding his grades due to him being home-schooled.
He would also study law at the University of Galway, and went viral back in October after he rose to challenge Catherine Connolly during a Literary and Debating event where she was present.
LATEST ON ENOCH
A judge has ordered Enoch Burke be arrested so he can be brought to court on Monday morning to hear whether he will be sent back to prison for breaching a court order.
The judge made ‘an order of attachment’ instructing Mr Burke be brought to court on Monday to ‘give his version of events’.
It is at that hearing Mr Cregan will decide whether Mr Burke should be returned to prison.
He also instructed Ms Mallon to submit an affidavit from the principal Mr Cunningham outlining the events of this week.
Mr Burke had been in jail since late November for breaches of a court order directing him not to trespass at Wilson’s Hospital School, where he worked as a teacher.
Last week, he sought a temporary injunction against a disciplinary appeals body tasked with reviewing his dismissal from the school.
Before the High Court on Wednesday, Mr Cregan said Mr Burke had raised ‘substantive’ and ‘credible’ issues in papers prepared against the Disciplinary Appeals Panel (DAP).
The judge said he was directing that Mr Burke be released from prison for ‘one reason and one reason only’, in the interest of the administration of justice and so that he has time to prepare for his case against the DAP.
The judge had said the decision was being made on the basis that he would not attend the school and he would be brought back to prison if he did.