A HIGH COURT judge who yesterday ordered Enoch Burke back to prison has said the teacher is “waging war” on anyone “who doesn’t agree with his version of events”.

In his fourth judgment in an ongoing case involving Burke and Wilson’s Hospital School, Judge Brian Cregan also said the teacher’s latest imprisonment was another misjudgement “in a case littered with his [Burke's] misjudgements”.

Burke was returned to prison yesterday for repeatedly breaching a court order instructing him not to trespass at the Co Westmeath school.

A court order has directed Burke not to trespass at the school where he worked as a teacher but has been repeatedly breached.

He had been in jail since late November for breaches of the court order and was released from Mountjoy Prison last week, on the condition he would not return to the school.

However, he returned to the school a day after his release on Thursday, and also returned to the school last Friday and again yesterday.

Judge Cregan today explained that he allowed the teacher out of prison last week to prepare detailed legal submissions he is taking against a disciplinary panel that is deciding whether his dismissal was fair.

Burke has taken a new case against the three-member Disciplinary Appeals Panel (DAP), which last met before Christmas to decide on his appeal against his dismissal.

Counsel for the panel agreed in the High Court earlier this month that the DAP would not meet again while it prepared a response, after Burke sought an injunction preventing the panel from holding any more meetings.

Burke argued in an affidavit against the inclusion of certain individuals on the panel, and claimed that aspects of December’s hearing damaged his prospects of winning his appeal.

The case is ongoing before the High Courts and is due to be heard in February.

Today, Judge Cregan said it was reasonable to expect that a considerable amount of case law will be referred to in the case, and that the case would proceed more efficiently if Burke was able to prepare his submissions from home.

He said that this was why he allowed Burke to be released last week without having to purge his contempt.

“Given the enormous amount of hours it takes to prepare for a case such as this, I formed the view that Mr Burke would be at a significant disadvantage if he were trying to prepare his case from a prison cell,” Cregan wrote.

“Mr Burke says a child could prepare it. That of course is typical of Mr Burke’s bluster. He has a case to make but it will undoubtedly be heavily contested by experienced counsel on the other side.”

He hit out at Burke for having “no knowledge of the law”, saying the teacher had “demonstrated that lack of knowledge” at every hearing before him.

“Most of his arguments were unstageable. He has also followed a disastrous legal strategy from start to finish,” Cregan wrote.

“At each stage, instead of learning from his defeats, he has doubled down, leading to heavier defeats.”

Judge Cregan also said that he allowed Burke to prepare the case from home “in the interests of justice”, adding that Burke “would be the first to argue that he only lost because he was in prison” if he wasn’t given that opportunity.

He said he allowed Burke out on condition that he would not attend the school, and that most people would have accepted their release from prison on those conditions.

He also said that he considered changing his decision after Burke’s “hostile” reaction in court, but that Burke “seemed more equivocal” when he was questioned a second time.

“In any event, I thought that perhaps when he reflected on it overnight, he would see the advantages to him of this decision. Unfortunately that has proven not to be the case,” Judge Cregan wrote.

The judge also hit back at claims by Burke that the court set “a trap” by releasing him.

“Mr Burke speaks as though he has no free will and that it was somehow pre-determined that he would be turning up at the school the following day,” he wrote.

The judge said that “most rational and reasonable people would have chosen to stay home and work on their case” and that the court was left with no option but to imprison Burke when he breached the order again.T

he judge also hit out at Burke for making “wild allegations” against his court and “almost all judges who have had the task of dealing with his case”.

“He is waging war on the School, the DAP, the courts, the judiciary – anybody in fact who doesn’t agree with his version of events,” he wrote.

The court also heard an application by the school’s board of management for costs to be awarded to it for the latest series of hearings.

Rosemary Mallon, a barrister acting on behalf of the school, asked for costs in the circumstances, noting that the school had to appear in court on every working day since Burke was freed from prison last week.

“There is only one reason for that, which is Mr Burke’s ongoing contempt,” Mallon said.

Burke, who appeared from Mountjoy Prison via video link, was offered an opportunity to argue against costs a number of times.

He referenced an article written in last weekend’s Sunday Independent that contained comments from the school’s principal, Noel Cunningham.

Burke alleged that Cunningham had referred to Wilson’s as “the happiest place in the world” and somewhere that “everyone is getting on with their business”.

He argued that Cunningham was “clear as a whistle” that Burke was not being disruptive, but that the principal had then “raced up the road to change what he said” in the article in order to have him imprisoned.

However, Judge Cregan told Burke that it was “a waste of time” to reference yesterday’s proceedings and eventually asked for the teacher’s microphone to be muted. 

Costs were awarded to Wilson’s Hospital School.