Secondary school teacher Enoch Burke has been ordered to pay a total of €225,000 in fines for breaching a court order directing him to stay away from the school where he worked.
The High Court has also increased the daily fine to be paid by Mr Burke for breaching the order to €2,000.
Mr Justice David Nolan made the orders following an application by Wilson's Hospital School to have Mr Burke arrested and jailed again for continuing to turn up at the school in breach of the injunction granted by the High Court.
Mr Burke has already spent more than 500 days in prison for contempt of court, since the case first came to court at the beginning of the school year in 2022.
The judge said he was not going to jail Mr Burke again as this would give him more publicity for his "deluded" sense of justice and he said it was "behoven" upon the school to take appropriate steps to secure its property against a trespasser.
Enoch Burke was not in court and the judge threatened to hold his brother Isaac Burke in contempt of court after he objected to a reference by the judge to his brother’s "perverted sense of justice".
The court was told that Mr Burke had started attending at the school again since it reopened after the summer holidays. This is the fourth year in a row in which Mr Burke has attended the school despite being suspended and dismissed and despite High Court orders directing him not to.
Mr Burke has appealed against his dismissal by the school. However, that appeal has not yet been heard after Mr Burke won his case in the Court of Appeal challenging the inclusion of ASTI General Secretary Kieran Christie on the disciplinary panel.
Rosemary Mallon, representing the school, told the High Court that the school has been in contact with ASTI to ask them to nominate a new person to sit on the panel and is awaiting that nomination.
She agreed with Mr Justice Nolan that if a new person was nominated, the appeal could be heard within the next two months.
Ms Mallon said the school had considered the possibility of employing a private security firm to protect its property but had discounted this because the board of management believed a school should not be policed by private security. She also told the court this would be "very problematic" for the school from a financial standpoint.
The court heard Mr Burke does not have a key to the school but has come in by following other teachers into the building. Ms Mallon said there were concerns about locking doors and also about there being a physical confrontation with Mr Burke if someone tried to stop him entering the school.
Judge Nolan said Mr Burke was "technically" still a member of staff, while his appeal against his dismissal was outstanding and it appeared he was going to continue to attend the school while that was the case.
He said if he put him back in jail, the school and the court would be "back in the same turmoil" as before and he said that was exactly what Mr Burke wanted.
The judge said he could understand that it was not an attractive prospect to have private security at the school but nor was it an attractive prospect to have a trespasser wandering around the premises.
The judge said the courts had made their displeasure known at Mr Burke’s breaches of orders by imposing a fine, and putting in place measures to remove money from his bank account to pay that fine.
He said the school was coming to court, asking it to act as a policeman when it should consider the civil remedies open to it. He said "no one would regard it as a bad step" for the school to try to keep a trespasser out.
Judge Nolan said locking Enoch Burke up would only give "fuel and publicity to his perverted sense of justice". He threated to have Mr Burke’s brother Isaac removed from court if he did not sit down and keep quiet, following his objections to this remark.
He agreed to give the school time to set out the details of the issues it had with employing private security and the remedies open to it.
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The judge dismissed an argument by Mr Burke that the Court of Appeal’s decision in relation to the disciplinary panel issue affected the injunctions granted by the High Court.
He said it was patently clear that all the steps so far taken by the court had no effect on Mr Burke and had simply made him a martyr in his own eyes and the eyes of his "misguided supporters". He said remedies for the school lay in the civil laws relating to trespassing.
While he was not going to send Mr Burke to jail, the judge said the court could not ignore the continued breach of court orders. He fixed the sum of money owed by Mr Burke in fines for contempt of court at €225,000 and he directed the receiver already appointed by the court to take appropriate steps to collect that money. He also increased the daily fine to €2,000.
The matter will be back in court next month and the judge said he expected to hear further submissions from the school on the steps it was taking to protect its property.
Mr Burke’s father Sean left court shouting that his son did "not have a perverted sense of justice". His sister Ammi told the judge that he was "not above the court of appeal" and was not a law unto himself, while Isaac Burke shouted "monstrosity".
