Dublin:

After once again refusing to sign an undertaking to follow a High Court judgment to avoid Wilson's Hospital School in Co-Westmeath, Enoch Burke, a secondary school teacher, will remain imprisoned at Mountjoy Prison. After Justice Mark Sanfey repeatedly questioned Burke about his willingness to comply with the injunction to avoid the school, Burke argued that obeying the order would mean "giving up" his religious principles and accepting "transgenderism.".

In addition to sharply criticizing the judges who heard his case and made differing rulings that resulted in his imprisonment, he maintained that the school's counsel had withheld evidence that supported his allegations. As a result of his indifference to the school's directive to address students by a different pronoun, Burke claimed to have spent more than 200 days in jail among drug dealers and murderers.

Judge Mark Heslin said in September that Burke had "flagrantly breached" the injunction barring him from attending the school, and as a result, he was ordered to prison "indefinitely" until he was purged for his disobedience. Recalling that he is in jail because he opposes "transgendarism," the instructor is separately contesting his dismissal from the school. When he was told to use alternative pronouns for a male student, he argued that the court's decision was unlawful and that his constitutional rights to religious freedom were infringed.

Burke's first sentence for disobeying a court order to avoid school was more than a hundred days in jail. Following his release, he came back and faced a daily fee of €700. Burke filed an appeal against his termination from his teaching post, but the decision about the three-member panel assigned to hear the case has not yet been made. Burke has meanwhile submitted a challenge to the panel.