ireland
A fitness-to-teach inquiry has ruled that a teacher who received a criminal conviction for falsely accusing a male colleague of viewing naked girls on his phone during class at an all-girls secondary school can remain on the Register of Teachers subject to compliance with several conditions.
An inquiry panel of the Teaching Council also directed that the teacher, a 44-year-old married father, be censured.
The decision followed an inquiry on Wednesday at which the teacher made admissions over two allegations that he had a conviction for an indictable offence.
The teacher, who admitted “a profound failure of judgement under acute pressure,” had asked the regulatory body to consider a sanction short of his removal from the register to enable him “to return to work I truly love.”
The inquiry heard he received a suspended two-month sentence in June 2024 and was ordered to carry out 40 hours of community service after pleading guilty to two counts of sending a grossly offensive communication to another person with the intent to cause harm, contrary to Section 4 of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences 2020.
The accused had sent an anonymous handwritten letter to gardaí on March 30th, 2022 and a similar letter to the school’s principal on May 25th, 2022.
Neither the teacher nor his former school can be identified as a result of a direction by the inquiry panel.
The letters, which purported to come from students in the school, claimed that the PE...
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