A TEACHING COUNCIL fitness to teach inquiry concerning Enoch Burke will not go ahead in full this week following an agreement in the High Court today.

The inquiry was originally scheduled to meet over three days from tomorrow, but Burke yesterday applied to the court for an injunction against the three members of the Teaching Council panel to stop it from taking place.

The former teacher was officially dismissed from his role at the school last month, after his sacking by Wilson’s Hospital School was upheld by a Disiplinary Appeals Panel (DAP).

This week’s inquiry was expected to relate to Burke’s trespassing at the school in breach of a High Court injunction, something which has seen him jailed for more than 700 days.

However, an agreement between Burke and counsel for the director of the Teaching Council will see the inquiry proceed with preliminary applications by the former teacher ahead of the full panel hearing.

They include a request by Burke for the chair fo the panel, Andy Pike, to recuse himself over accusations of bias and for the inquiry to be adjourned until a later date.

The Irish Times reported yesterday that Burke’s application for an injunction against Pike and two other members of the panel centred on claims of bias against the chair, as well as issues with a witness giving evidence anonymously and other procedural matters.

The case returned before the High Court this morning, when an application was made by the director of the Teaching Council to be joined as a notice party to Burke’s application.

Counsel for the director, Eoghan O’Sullivan, argued before Judge Brian Cregan that the nature of the inquiry meant that Burke should have to apply for a judicial review, rather than an injunction.

He also said that while there had already been a number of preliminary hearings of the inquiry, last week was the first time that Burke had raised issues of bias on the panel.

O’Sullivan also said that Burke had been told that the Teaching Council inquiry would consider his request for an adjournment and for Pike to recuse himself when it met tomorrow.

However, Burke, who appeared in court in person, argued that the inquiry should not go ahead and that the director of the Teaching Council should not be joined as a notice party because the director should be independent of the panel.

It was then decided that another judge, Micheál D O’Connell, should consider the matter.

‘Chasm’

During that hearing, O’Sullivan laid out his submissions again before Burke began raising objections in his own submissions.

Much of the proceedings were taken up with questions from Burke about why a barrister for the Teaching Council director was in the courtroom.

The former teacher said he had served a notice of motion on three members of the inquiry panel yesterday, and that he wanted to know how O’Sullivan had “got his hands” on relevant court documents when the director was supposed to be independent.

“There should be a chasm between the director and [...] the panel,” Burke told the court.

He then spent around half an hour asking for Judge O’Connell ask O’Sullivan to tell the court how this happened.

“I’m not going to carry out an inquiry at your request,” the judge said when he was first asked.

Burke repeated the request dozens of times during an increasingly heated back-and-forth exchange with the judge.

At one point, Burke’s mother Martina began heckling the judge, who warned the former teacher that he could “take prompts from wherever” but that his family did not have a right to an audience.

Barrister Eoghan O’Sullivan then stood up and offered to provide Burke with the information he requested, but the former teacher interrupted and told the judge “you should have asked him”.

Isaac, Martina and Ammi Burke then began repeating this, prompting Judge O’Connell to tell Enoch again that his family did not have a right to an audience in the court.

“You seem to be more concerned with the format Mr O’Sullivan would be asked the information than to receive it,” the judge said.

Burke replied that he wanted to be confident that the judge was “not coming in here as an actor” but as someone with “the bona fides” to make a sound judgment in his case.

He then asked Judge O’Connell to recuse himself on the grounds that he would not ask O’Sullivan how pleadings and papers that were served on the panel “came to his knowledge”.

The judge refused to recuse himself, prompting Ammi Burke to also start him and saying that O’Sullivan “shouldn’t know about these proceedings”.

She was warned twice by Judge O’Connell and told she would be removed from court if she interrupted again.

‘This is not an interview’

Enoch Burke continued asking the judge to ask O’Sullivan how he had seen court materials, before his mother Martina began heckling and saying that her son had “a right to a judge that upholds the law”.

Judge O’Connell warned Martina Burke twice and threatened to have her removed from court if she interrupted the proceedings again.

Burke then told the judge: “I have constitutional right to a fair and just judge who will uphold the law, who’ll be seen to uphold the law. That will be seen to be done.”

Judge O’Connell responded “this is not an interview” before telling Burke that he would consider the former teacher’s submissions finished and ask O’Sullivan to respond if he did not proceed with other points.

When Burke again urged him to ask where O’Sullivan had obtained the information sent to the panel, Judge O’Connell said: “I’ve told you about 15 times now that I will not ask him. Do you want to proceed or not?”

Martina Burke then accused the judge of being “told what to do by Judge Cregan” before she was ordered to leave the courtroom.

Burke’s brother Isaac then interrupted, and Judge O’Connell asked him to identify himself; when he refused, he was given an immediate final warning that he would be removed if he disrupted proceedings again.

The judge then said it was “the definition of insanity” to ask for the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result.

“I’ll tell you what is insane: to ask me for the 15th or 16th time to do what I will not do,” he said.

Ammi Burke then said it was “scandalous” that the judge was calling her brother insane, before Judge O’Connell also ordered her to leave the courtroom.

When Burke continued to ask for the question to be put to O’Sullivan, the judge replied: “You have asked me nearly 20 times now.”

Burke argued that it was a “very serious matter”, prompting the judge to respond: “And you’ve said that eight times now.”

The hearing continued like this for another number of minutes, before Judge O’Connell threatened to terminate Burke’s application and to return him to Castlerea Prison.

“At what point do you think I’m going to say yes now that you’ve asked me 20 odd times?” he said.

“I’m not going to stay here all day. There is another case waiting to get on, but if you continue ding-donging […] I’m just going to have to terminate the entire application.”

‘Different things’

Burke then accused the judge of a lack of concern for the matter by refusing to ask the question.

“Not asking a question and not showing a concern are two entirely different things. One does not follow from the other,” Judge O’Connell said.

After the judge eventually said that he had been asked by Burke “probably 40 times at this stage”, O’Sullivan once again stood to explain the matter.

He told the court that the information had been sent by Burke to two general Teaching Council emails, and that various parties were copying each other in correspondence, which had enabled the director to see it.

The judge eventually agreed that the director of the Teaching Council could be joined as a notice party to the application, before asking for him to make representations regarding Burke’s application for an injunction.

Counsel told the court that his client would offer Burke to make an application for both an adjournment of the inquiry and for Pike to recuse himself tomorrow, and that if either were agreed to, the inquiry would not go ahead.

He said that regardless of the outcome, evidence in the inquiry would not be heard this week so that both sides could consider the matter further.

The court then rose for lunch to allow Burke to consider whether to agree to the offer, before the former teacher did so later this afternoon.