Enoch Burke’s appeal against school dismissal decision to be held on Friday

Enoch Burke’s appeal to a three-person panel against a school board of management’s decision to dismiss him from his teaching position will be held on Friday.

The decision dismissing Mr Burke from his position at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath was taken earlier this year.

His appeal against that decision will be heard at an hotel in Athlone on Friday.

Mr Burke, in a statement issued to media organisations on Tuesday, said he will make an oral submission to the panel and will be accompanied at the hearing by his mother Martina, sister Ammi and brother Isaac.

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He said he had requested certain documents from the school board for the appeal hearing, including of WhatsApp messages exchanged in June 2022 between the then principal, Niamh McShane, and the chair of the board of management, John Rogers.

Other materials sought include minutes of three meetings of the school board held in May, June and August 2022, and an audio/video file of his “contribution” to a school chapel service held on June 21st 2022.

So far, none of the material requested has been provided to him, he said in the statement.

He had written to the appeal panel expressing concern that two of the three individuals appointed to it – Kieran Christie, general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland and Jack Cleary, child protection adviser with the Joint Managerial Body, which represents voluntary secondary schools in negotiations at national level affecting management of schools, are “inappropriate nominees” to hear the appeal because their organisations work with TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland), he said.

He called on the panel chairperson, Seán Ó Longáin, “to address both of these issues as a matter of urgency before Friday’s hearing”.

Separately, the High Court’s Mr Justice Alexander Owens ruled in May that the school’s paid suspension of Mr Burke last August pending a disciplinary process was lawful.

That process was invoked by the then principal, Niamh McShane, arising from Mr Burke’s behaviour at the school event on June 21st 2022 where he was publicly critical of her request to teachers to address a student by their preferred name and using the pronouns “they/them”.

Mr Justice Owens also found Mr Burke’s continued attendance at the school following his suspension was a significant aggravating feature which made it proper to award €15,000 damages to the school against Mr Burke.

That award was separate to daily fines of €700 imposed by another High Court judge, Mr Justice Brian O’Moore, from late January after he resumed attending at the school when it reopened after the Christmas holidays.

Before that, Mr Burke had spent more than 100 days in prison for contempt of court orders restraining his attendance at the school but he was released just before Christmas without purging his contempt.