The High Court has finished hearing the case being taken by Wilson's Hospital School against teacher Enoch Burke.
The school wants the court to find that it was correct to suspend Mr Burke from his teaching position in August 2022 pending the outcome of a disciplinary process against him.
Mr Burke alleges the disciplinary process, his suspension and the subsequent decision to dismiss him were unlawful.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens said he was tempted to give his judgment immediately but would not do so this evening as he was "a little bit tired".
He said his provisional view was that even if the school had acted entirely incorrectly in relation to the procedures surrounding Mr Burke’s suspension, there was a clear case of trespass, and Mr Burke was not entitled to go back on school premises.
He said he would give his judgment "fairly shortly" and continued the injunction preventing Mr Burke from trespassing on the school premises in the meantime.
In his closing remarks to the court, Senior Counsel, Alex White said the school entirely rejected any question of disciplinary action being taken against Mr Burke because he held any particular views.
He said Mr Burke had never been required to deny his beliefs. He had every right to hold views but that did not extend to a right to act without limit or restraint where his rights conflicted with the rights of others.
Mr Burke was not in court. Mr Justice Owens told him on Tuesday at lunchtime that he could not come back into the court until he was willing to accept the court’s rulings after he disupted proceedings for two hours over an issue relating to the disclosure of documents on Tuesday morning.
Mr Burke sent an email to the court this morning. He then arrived at the Four Courts just before lunchtime with his mother, Martina, sister, Ammi and brother Isaac and read the email aloud to members of the media outside before leaving again.
Mr Justice Owens was told that a garda had conveyed to Mr Burke that he could come back into the courtroom if he was wiling to abide by the court's rulings. Mr Burke acknowledged this the court heard but said he was leaving.
Mr Burke told members of the media outside the court that the offer of remote video link access to the proceedings was not acceptable to him.
In his email to the court Mr Burke claimed he had been unjustly barred from the hearing of the action.
He repeated his allegations about the disclosure of documents to him. He said he had been repeatedly laughed at, mocked and ridiculed by the judge and he said when he pressed the matter, the judge had suggested he should be "carted off" to Mountjoy Prison.
Despite the fact that solicitors for the school had written to Mr Burke the following day on the disclosure issues, Mr Burke said almost all the issues had remained unchanged. He said it was "unconscionable" that the case had been allowed to proceed.
He claimed that in order for him to participate in the trial, the judge had made it a condition that he accepted the issues he raised were flimsy, stupid and a waste of time. He said he was gravely concerned by the actions of the judge and claimed he had been unjustly barred from the trial.
Mr Burke also claimed that the chairperson of the board of management, John Rogers, had avoided service of a subpoena from him. He said he had last visited Mr Rogers’ home on Monday at 10.50pm and he said his wife told him she was not at liberty to tell him where Mr Rogers was. The court has been told that Mr Rogers is not in court because he is in hospital.
It is also understood Mr Burke served a subpoena on the former principal of the school, Niamh McShane, who was already a witness in the case, by turning up at her home as she returned from work one evening last week.
In response to the email, Mr Justice Owens said he emphatically rejected all the points made by Mr Burke.
He said Mr Burke’s conduct in court was completely unacceptable and sometimes it was necessary to be direct and to call a spade a spade. It was necessary for a judge not to be too polite and to drive home the message by whatever means appropriate.
The judge said the issue of the disclosure of documents had been dealt with to his satisfaction by lawyers for the school and Mr Burke could have come into court if he had indicated he was prepared to abide by its rulings, and had an intelligent, frank and informal exchange of views in relation to any of the issues he raised.
The judge said this was obviously a preliminary letter in advance of some other onslaught by Mr Burke against him and was an attempt to litigate by correspondence. He said Mr Burke should have turned up to raise the matter in the normal civilised way litigants behave in court.
The judge said you could not win a soccer match by running away with the ball. The ball had been replaced and the match would continue.
Senior Counsel Mark Connaughton said Mr Burke had been communicated with by lawyers for the school on a number of occasions by email, not just to deal with the disclosure of documents but to communicate with him that he was welcome in court if he accepted the judge’s directions. He said the disclosure issues had been dealt with and an explanation for each issue had been given in a specific way.
In his closing submissions, Mr Connaughton told the court the way Mr Burke had conducted himself at a school event on 21 June was extraordinary and his conduct towards the then principal was unacceptable.
He said she was entitled to pursue it further and to form the view that dealing with this matter as "gross misconduct" was appropriate as a mechanism to pursue it further. He said she had no animus towards Mr Burke beyond being extremely dissatisfied with how he behaved and it was up to the board of management to decide what should happen. Mr Connaughton said the disciplinary process had been validly invoked.
Mr Connaughton said Mr Burke could have been in no doubt at a meeting of the board on 22 August as to what the allegations against him were. He said this was a man who had set his face against any form of cooperation and the school had grounds to fear that Mr Burke was going to repeat some of the behaviours it was concerned about.
Mr Connaughton said the meeting on 22 August was not a normal one as Mr Burke and his sister, Ammi who accompanied him, would not let it be a normal meeting. They did not come to the meeting to engage with the issues, he said, they came to engage in their own agenda. He said the decision to place Mr Burke on suspension pending a disciplinary hearing which was due to take place a few weeks later was entirely valid and unassailable.
Mr Connaughton added that Mr Burke had then disobeyed the lawful instruction of the school to suspend him. He said he had attempted to completely torpedo the disciplinary meeting that eventually took place in January this year. The court was told yesterday that Mr Burke, his brother, Isaac, sister Ammi and mother Martina repeatedly chanted and shouted, disrupting that meeting.
