THE HIGH COURT has ruled that Enoch Burke owes the courts more than €200,000 in fines for repeatedly trespassing at Wilson’s Hospital School in recent years.

The former teacher, who was recently released from his fifth stint in prison for disobeying an injunction to stay away from the school, has had the fines imposed on him in an attempt to get him to obey the court’s order.

Last month, the court asked counsel for the school’s board of management Rosemary Mallon to provide an estimate of the number of days Burke had trespassed and how much he owed for repeatedly breaching the injunction.

The calculation was initially set at around €450,000, but Judge Brian Cregan raised issue with how the fines had been calculated because he said they included weekends and periods when the school was on holidays.

In a written judgment this morning, Judge Cregan set the headline amount owed by the former teacher at €273,000.

However, the judge also noted that Burke has already paid €64,931.82 to the Courts Service through the diversion of his salary and the appointment of a receiver. 

He therefore said the outstanding amount owed in fines by Burke to the Courts Service currently stands at €208,268.18.

Judge Cregan also said that he had previously expressed concerns about the proportionality of the fines compared to Burke’s income as a teacher, but that Burke had refused to provide information about his assets and liabilities to the court.

He said that the court therefore had no information on Burke’s financial position or his ability to pay the fines, and could not make a decision to reduce the amount owed to a lesser amount.

The judge said that Burke could challenge the proportionality of the fines if he wanted, but that he would have to furnish the court with a statement of his affairs if that was the case.

In his concluding remarks, Judge Cregan said that Burke has paid “a very heavy price” for refusing to obey the court’s orders.

“In short, he has wasted 700 days of his life in prison, his financial position has been undermined, and his reputation as a teacher damaged,” the judge said.

“All this has happened because of a senseless and misguided campaign to breach a court order.”

He added that none of this would have happened if Burke had simply obeyed the court’s orders, and that the former teacher has discovered that the “rule of law applies to everybody”.

Burke, who appeared in court via video link, was invited to speak on whether costs should be awarded against him after the judgment was delivered.

He said that Wilson’s Hospital School shouldn’t have asked him to address a pupil by their preferred pronouns, claiming that he should have “a right to religious liberty and religious freedom”.

He refused multiple requests to address the issue of costs, before being told by Judge Cregan: “I don’t need the party political broadcast you give.”

Burke’s microphone was muted and costs were awarded against him.

The judge also said he would deal with a related matter on whether to ban Burke’s mother Martina, his brother Isaac and his sister Ammi from attending court in person in another judgment next week. 

How did the court calculate Enoch Burke’s fines?

In his written judgment, Judge Brian Cregan outlined exactly how he calculated the fines owed by Burke to the Courts Service.

The initial fine was set at €700 for every day that Burke trespassed by Judge Brian O’Moore on 26 January 2023.

Judge Cregan noted that Burke trespassed every day from that date until 27 March 2023, a period of 36 days which meant he owed €25,200.

Burke did not trespass at the school from 28 March until 31 March 2023 because he was in court for a case involving the school that was heard by Judge Alexander Owens.

After that, Burke was found to have trespassed for another 24 days from 1 April until 19 May 2023, resulting in a further €16,800 in fines.

On 19 May 2023, Judge Owens delivered a ruling that permanently restrained Burke from attending the school, which replaced the previous interlocutary injunction that the former teacher breached.

Judge Cregan said that even though Burke then continued to attend the school every day that it was in term from 20 May until 8 September 2023, when the former teacher was jailed again, he was not counting fines for that period.

He said that this was because Judge O’Moore’s initial order for fines was only for breaching the interlocutary injunction – not Judge Owens’ order permanently barring Burke from showing up at the school.

That essentially meant the €700 fines imposed on Burke were no longer valid from the time Judge Owens made his ruling on 19 May 2023. 

Burke was then jailed on 8 September and remained in Mountjoy Prison until the end of the school year on 24 June 2024, so he did not appear at Wilson’s during that time.

When the school returned on 22 August 2024, Burke began trespassing again until he was imprisoned again on 2 September for breaching the permanent injunction handed down by Judge Owens in May 2023.

Again, the fines were not deemed to be valid during this period because they were only deemed to apply to Judge O’Moore’s initial order relating to the interlocutary injunction.

On 20 December 2024, Burke was released by Judge David Nolan but was told that he would have to pay fines of €1,400 for every day that he breached Judge Owens’ order.

The former teacher then trespassed at the school for 98 days from the time the school re-opened after Christmas on 6 January 2025 and 3 September that year.

That resulted in further fines worth €137,200.

The school then requested that Burke should be jailed again on 4 September 2025, when Judge Nolan increased the daily fine to €2,000 per day.

Burke then respassed at the school for 46 days between 5 September and 17 November 2025, resulting in fines worth €92,000.

The High Court ordered that Burke should return to prison on 18 November and he was attached and sent to jail on 25 November, with Judge Cregan noting that the former teacher did not trespass at the school between those dates.

Burke remained in prison from 25 November until 14 January this year, so could not attend the school during that period either.

However, Judge Cregan allowed him to be released from prison without purging his contempt on 14 January, in order to let him prepare a case against the Disciplinary Appeals Panel that was deciding whether his sacking was fair.

Burke then tresassed at the school for one day on 15 January, adding €2,000 to the amount he owed, before he was imprisoned again on 20 January.

He remained in prison and did not attend the school until 1 July, when he was released because the school is on summer holidays.

Adding all of these amounts together, Judge Cregan found that Burke had accumulated €273,200 in fines for trespassing at the school on 205 days.

But the judge also found that Burke had paid some of this money back already through the emptying of his bank account and the redirecting of his salary through a garnishee order.

A receiver appointed by the court to obtain money via the garnishee order said they had collected approximately €51,613.93 by getting the Department of Education to pay them Burke’s salary.

Judge Cregan then deducted €15,000 from that figure, because that amount was paid to Wilson’s Hospital School by the receiver after Judge Owens awarded damages against Burke in his May 2023 ruling.

He also awarded costs to the receiver of €12,300 – a sum of €10,000 plus 23% VAT – which he said should be paid out from the amount collected.

Both totals were subtracted from the fee collected by the receiver, leaving a total of €24,313.93 paid by Burke through the redirection of his salary.

The judge also said the Courts Service had received €40,617.89 from Burke’s Bank of Ireland accounts on foot of the order by Judge Nolan on 9 April 2025.

He added the two figures together and found that Burke had paid €64,931.82 in fines to date.

This was subtracted from the headline figure of €273,000, meaning that Burke currently owes the Courts Service €208,268.18.