Why Enoch Burke Was Jailed: What the Irish Courts Found

Enoch Burke was jailed for contempt of court, and Mr Justice Cregan of the High Court has said why: “Mr Burke is not being imprisoned for his religious beliefs; he is being imprisoned for breach of a court order not to trespass on the school property.” He said that in the most recent judgment we know of as of 8 November 2026, dated 15 October 2026. The order was made by Mr Justice Owens in 2023, and Mr Justice Cregan described it in that judgment as one by which Mr Burke “was restrained forthwith from entering or trespassing on the premises of Wilson’s Hospital School, in the possession or control of the plaintiff, without the consent of the plaintiff.” The plaintiff is the board of management of that school in County Westmeath, where Mr Burke taught German and History.

The case, Mr Justice Cregan wrote on 18 November 2025, arises out of “a dispute between the school and Mr. Burke” in which he was dismissed for gross misconduct arising out of “his refusal to obey a direction of the school” that a pupil be addressed as “they,” and out of what he did at a school religious service and other events. In the same judgment he set that dispute apart from the imprisonment: “This aspect of the case is not about transgenderism. If Mr. Burke had been directed by the court to comply with the principal’s direction, and to refer to a pupil by their new pronoun, against his religious beliefs and he refused, then it would be about transgenderism.” And he went on, “But the court order does not direct him to say or do anything of the sort that might conflict with his religious beliefs.”

Mr Burke’s own account of why he was in prison is in the record too. At a hearing on 7 November 2022, Mr Justice O’Moore noted, he said the court’s decisions went to “abolish religious liberty,” and on 15 December 2022 he told the court, “I do not wish to leave Mountjoy as a criminal on reprieve but rather to leave it justified in my cause, which is the cause of religious freedom.”

Mr Justice Cregan dates the third order sending him to prison to 2 September 2024, and he was released on 20 December 2024. By 15 October 2026 there had been six such orders.

On 9 May 2022 the principal of Wilson’s Hospital emailed the staff to say that a third-year student would make a social transition the next day and would be known by a different name, and that “they” should be used in place of the pronoun used until then. The judgments do not name the student and neither do we, because, as Mr Justice Dignam put it when he set these events out in January 2023, the court has “an obligation to protect and have regard to that child’s privacy and welfare.” He also recorded that Mr Burke had started teaching at the school in 2018, that the evidence showed “an unblemished employment history in the school,” and that he was “a well-regarded teacher.”

Mr Burke answered the next morning with an email to the principal: “It is wrong that this belief system would be forced upon students and I will be taking this further. It is an abuse of children and their constitutional rights.” On 27 May she wrote to him, “The ethos of our school is inclusive and ensuring the welfare of students is paramount,” and went on, “While I recognise that it may be challenging for you in light of your own religious beliefs, in view of the ethos of the school and the school’s obligations under the Equal Status Act 2000, I expect that you will communicate with this student in accordance with the wishes of the student and the student’s parents.” The Court of Appeal later recorded that he replied “indicating that he would not comply with the direction.”

On 21 June 2022 the school, which is associated with the Church of Ireland, an Anglican church, held a service in its chapel for its 260th anniversary, with that church’s Bishop of Kilmore officiating. Nobody disputes, Mr Justice Dignam wrote, that at the end of it Mr Burke stood and spoke, “setting out that he would not accept transgenderism and putting it to the principal to withdraw her instruction of the 9th May,” or that sixth-year students walked out. What else happened that day was disputed, and the judge left that to the disciplinary process.

That August the principal gave the school’s board a report arguing that his behaviour amounted to gross misconduct, and on 22 August the board decided to put him on paid administrative leave until a disciplinary hearing could be held. Mr Burke went to the school on 25, 26 and 29 August. On 30 August the school went to the High Court and obtained a temporary order, what Mr Justice Cregan later called “an interim injunction to restrain Mr. Burke from trespassing on the school,” and on 5 September 2022, for not complying with it, he was committed to prison for the first time.

The first orders, of August and September 2022, were temporary. Mr Justice O’Moore said of them that December that they “did not and do not oblige Mr. Burke to address anyone in a particular way or to use a specific style or title,” and that “In essence, they prohibit him from entering the school’s premises or interfering with the school’s educational activities.” The Court of Appeal dismissed Mr Burke’s appeal against them on 7 March 2023. Later that month the High Court tried the school’s case over four days, and Mr Justice Owens gave judgment on 19 May 2023. His order was made on 17 July 2023, and the later committals were for breaking it. Mr Burke did not appeal it until 2026, and on 21 May 2026 the Court of Appeal refused him more time to do so.

Mr Justice Cregan said of that order on 18 November 2025 that it “simply directs that, as he has been dismissed from his position for gross misconduct, he must not trespass on school premises.” On 28 November 2025 he said he wanted to make it “crystal clear” what Mr Burke must do to be released:

“He must give an undertaking to the court that he will not enter on, or trespass on, the school’s property again without the school’s consent. That is all. (The issue of outstanding fines will however remain.)”

“He does not have to give any undertaking that he will follow the school principal’s direction to call a child ‘they’ or ‘them’. He does not have to accept transgenderism. He does not have to stop protesting against transgenderism. He does not have to change his religious beliefs one iota.”

Giving that undertaking is what the judges call purging his contempt, and it matters because of what an order of committal is. Under the Rules of the Superior Courts it directs that a person “shall be lodged in prison until he purge his contempt and is discharged pursuant to further order of the Court,” so it has no fixed length. Mr Justice Nolan said on 20 December 2024 that “the purpose of this form of imprisonment is to coerce an individual into obeying a court order.” A judge can also end it without the undertaking, as judges did here, which is why Mr Burke’s time in prison comes as a series of separate stays.

Here are the orders that sent him to prison, and how each stay ended.

Ordered to prison	Released	What the judgments record
5 September 2022 (first)	21 December 2022	Mr Justice O’Moore released him because the school was closing for Christmas and did not oppose his release, and noted that fines were another option.
8 September 2023 (second)	28 June 2024	Mr Justice Sanfey wrote on 19 July 2024 that he released him on 28 June “notwithstanding that he had continued to refuse to purge his contempt.” Mr Justice Cregan’s account of 15 July 2026 gives 24 June, “at the end of the school year.”
2 September 2024 (third)	20 December 2024	Mr Justice Cregan gives the date of this order in his judgment of 15 July 2026. Mr Justice Nolan released him, calling this “one of the very rare cases where the coercive imprisonment should stop, at least for the moment,” and raised the daily fine to €1,400.
18 November 2025 (fourth; in prison by 26 November)	14 January 2026	Mr Justice Cregan released him “in order to give him a proper chance of preparing for” his court case against the Disciplinary Appeal Panel, the body hearing his appeal against dismissal.
19 January 2026 (fifth)	1 July 2026	Mr Justice Cregan released him “even though he had refused to purge his contempt,” because of “a material change in circumstances”: by the judge’s account the panel had refused his appeal on 20 May 2026 and the school’s board had confirmed the dismissal that day.
15 October 2026 (sixth)	None recorded in any judgment we know of as of 8 November 2026	Mr Justice Cregan ordered his committal to Mountjoy Prison after fifteen entries onto school property between 27 August and 8 October 2026.

On 15 October 2026 Mr Justice Cregan said Mr Burke had “spent over 700 days in prison for repeated breaches of this High Court order.”

In the judgments from 2022 to 2026 Mr Burke rests his case on religious freedom and conscience, and they let us hear him say so. He opened his appeal to the Court of Appeal, which gave judgment on 7 March 2023, by saying that “this case concerns the issue of transgenderism and the suspension of a teacher who objected to a demand by a principal to address a student by a new name and the ‘they’ pronoun.” The court summed up his argument as “an exercise in ‘compelled speech’, and that he cannot be compelled to express beliefs contrary to his conscience,” and reported him as saying that to comply “would be against his conscience, and in his view, against the explicit tenets of his Christian faith.”

When the school asked the High Court in September 2023 to send him back to prison, Mr Burke swore in a written statement of 7 September, an affidavit, that “the order of Judge Owens, being plainly repugnant to the Constitution and unlawful, is invalid,” words the Court of Appeal quoted on 21 May 2026. The next day the judge noted that he described the application as aimed at stripping him of his religious liberty because he refused to “dish out something to young people that could destroy them.”

The school’s side is in the principal’s email of 27 May 2022 and in what its board told the Court of Appeal in 2023. As that court summarised it, the board said “what is in issue is the decision by the Board to place the appellant on paid administrative leave,” and that the case “is not about ‘transgenderism’ or religious rights.” The deputy principal later gave evidence, set out in a judgment of 9 April 2025, that Mr Burke’s presence was “extremely distracting and causing significant disruption to staff and students,” and from 13 October 2025 the school hired security guards to keep him out.

More than one judge has told him that his beliefs are his own, and the plainest line is Mr Justice Cregan’s of 1 July 2026: “He is entitled to his religious views on transgenderism; he is allowed to turn up at the school gates and protest against his dismissal every day of the week.”

When he was out of prison the High Court fined him by the day, €700 from January 2023, €1,400 from 20 December 2024 and €2,000 from 4 September 2025. On 15 July 2026 Mr Justice Cregan added it up at €273,200, counting “each school day on which Mr Burke attended at the school in breach of the High Court order.” He credited Mr Burke with €64,931.82, which is what remained of the money taken from his salary and a bank account after €15,000 had gone to the school for the damages Mr Justice Owens awarded for trespass and €12,300 to the court’s receiver in fees, and that left €208,268.18 to pay. Asked about his income, Mr Burke answered in an affidavit of 28 February 2025: “I cannot in all good conscience engage in this exercise. No judge has the right to strip a citizen of his livelihood because he will not accept the denial of his constitutional rights.”

The school’s board dismissed him on 19 January 2023, with effect from 21 April 2023 and subject to his appeal, and on 18 November 2025 Mr Justice Cregan gave the grounds as his refusal of the direction and “his gross misconduct at a school religious service (and other events) and the manner in which he conducted his objection to transgenderism.” According to Mr Justice Cregan’s judgment of 1 July 2026, the Disciplinary Appeal Panel refused the appeal on 20 May 2026 and the board confirmed the dismissal the same day.

Whether the principal’s direction was lawful is a question the Court of Appeal said on 21 May 2026 was not one for those proceedings. “The question of the lawfulness of the direction of the Principal of 9th May 2022 is not an issue to be resolved in these proceedings,” it said, and it added that under the Education Act 1998 that decision belonged to the Disciplinary Appeal Panel, not to the High Court or the Court of Appeal in these proceedings. What the High Court did declare, in the Owens order, was that his suspension “was, and is, lawful.” Mr Justice Owens also dismissed Mr Burke’s own claim against the school, in which he argued for his constitutional rights, “because Mr. Burke refused to turn up to argue it,” as Mr Justice Cregan wrote on 1 July 2026. By 15 October 2026, Mr Justice Cregan said, Mr Burke had brought a case challenging the panel’s and the board’s decision, which the judgment calls judicial review, and “these proceedings are before the High Court.” We leave the question where the courts had left it on that date.

On 15 October 2026 Mr Justice Cregan found him in contempt again, on the school’s evidence of fifteen entries onto its property between 27 August and 8 October 2026. The judge said Mr Burke’s replying affidavit “does not deny any of the trespasses,” that Mr Burke “says, as he has always said, that the order of Mr Justice Owens is unlawful” and was appealing to the Supreme Court, and that “neither his application to the Supreme Court, nor his judicial review proceedings, are grounds to refuse the application being sought by the plaintiff.” He ordered Mr Burke’s “immediate attachment and committal to Mountjoy Prison,” which under the Rules of the Superior Courts is an order that a person be arrested, brought before the court and lodged in prison. He also ordered the sequestration of Mr Burke’s car, a process the Law Reform Commission’s paper on contempt of court calls “a drastic remedy designed to coerce rather than punish,” under which the owner keeps the property but cannot use it. And he said again that Mr Burke “has the keys to his own prison and, if he agrees to stay outside the school grounds, he will be released immediately.”

That is the most recent judgment we know of as of 8 November 2026, dated 15 October 2026, and we know of none that says whether Mr Burke has been released since. On what he may and may not do, Mr Justice Cregan said that day that Mr Burke “can attend every day at the school gates to protest against his recent dismissal, but he must obey the order of the High Court and not trespass on school property.”

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