Two Burkes kicked out of court during farcical 30-minute stand-off between Enoch and judge

Enoch Burke appeared at the High Court in person today (file photo) Alamy Stock Photo

the burkes

The former teacher was in court in an effort to halt a Teaching Council inquiry this week.

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 be…