The High Court has ruled that the Attorney General can seek an order allowing secondary school teacher Enoch Burke's salary to be used to pay off the fines he owes for contempt of court.
In a ruling issued this afternoon, Mr Justice David Nolan said Mr Burke owes just over €79,000 in fines for continuing to attend at Wilson's Hospital School in Westmeath, despite a court order directing him not to.
A High Court judge ruled in early 2023 that he should pay a fine of €700 a day for each day that he continued to attend at the school in breach of the court injunction.
Mr Justice Nolan said he had continued to attend at the school since it reopened in January this year "in flagrant breach" of court orders.
The judge said Mr Burke had not purged his contempt but had "doubled down on it" and he said he seemed to regard himself as a martyr.
He said Mr Burke had not paid any of the fines directed and was still in receipt of his salary, which is paid by the Department of Education.
The judge ruled that the Attorney General could seek a garnishee order which allows a creditor to seek payment of a debt from a third party who owes money to the debtor.
He said all the school wanted to do was act as a school and it had already expended significant sums of money and time pursuing Mr Burke.
He said it seemed to him that the Attorney General should intervene in the public interest, and he would make the Attorney General the Minister for Finance and Minister for Education parties to the proceedings.
The judge said he also intends to impose a new daily fine of €1,400 on Mr Burke for each day that passes until he purges his contempt.
And he said he wanted Mr Burke to provide him with sworn evidence about his assets and income before the close of business next Friday.
Mr Burke has appealed his dismissal from the school.
That appeal has still not been heard due to ongoing legal proceedings and Mr Burke is being paid his salary as a teacher in the meantime.
The judge said he had received correspondence from Mr Burke in which he said Mr Burke simply "rehashed" his arguments that the school and courts were breaching his constitutional rights.
Judge Nolan said Mr Burke had repeated that he had spent 513 days in Mountjoy Prison because he had refused to abide by the principal's instruction to use the "they" pronoun in relation to a pupil and had claimed every judge had refused to acknowledge the truth and uphold the constitution and the law.
Mr Burke described this as an appalling travesty of justice. But Judge Nolan said none of this is true.
He said the reason Mr Burke had spent so long in Mountjoy Prison, and was in this position, was because of his "total and utter rejection of the norms of a civilised society to abide by the rule of law."
Judge Nolan said society breaks down if court orders are ignored.
And he said Mr Burke had refused to abide by the rule of law because he thought he was above the law or could achieve some advantage by acting in the manner in which he is acting.
The judge also urged the legislature to address the lack of legislation to deal with contempt of court as a matter of urgency.
The case will be back in court on 7 March.
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