A teacher has said having sex in a hotel with an 18-year-old former student was a one-off.
Under cross-examination at a fitness-to-teach inquiry, she agreed this behaviour was inappropriate for a teacher, but she viewed the male as a past pupil when the encounter occurred in early August 2018.
It is alleged the teacher had a romantic relationship with the male during summer 2018.
Between June 14th and 20th that year, while he was sitting his Leaving Certificate, there were daily communications between the pair via picture messaging service Snapchat, it is alleged.
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The Teaching Council director alleges the woman had a sexual encounter with the 18-year-old male on an unknown date in early August that year. The teacher has admitted to this single encounter.
When the inquiry resumed on Wednesday, following an adjournment since July, the teacher said a sexual encounter with the student came about in early August 2018 when she bumped into him while out in a bar with friends.
“Mr [student’s surname] came over to me and he said: ‘Hi, how are you?’ It was a brief interaction.”
She said they bumped into each other later that night. “The conversation was very natural in the bar. We left together.”
There was flirting between them and they went to a hotel where they had sex and stayed the night, she said. “The next morning I thought, ‘Oh God, I need to get out of here’. So I left first.”
She said she and the student had no contact before or since that night.
She denied several allegations made by her ex-partner before the inquiry, including that a Facebook message from the student popped up on her phone.
In July the panel heard the teacher’s ex-partner provided screenshots to the inquiry of what he claimed was a diary kept by her. On Wednesday she said she never kept a diary.
She said that being a teacher “means everything” to her. “It’s part of my identity, I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have teaching,” she said, becoming emotional.
The teacher has been working in another secondary school since 2019.
In closing submissions, Eoghan Cole SC, for the teacher, drew the panel’s attention to the fact that the teacher called the student to give evidence.
Eoghan O’Sullivan, for the Teaching Council director, said the student, when giving evidence in July, was not in a position to deny evidence of alleged text messages on September 1st, 2018, between him and the teacher’s ex-partner. In these, the latter allegedly sought to confront the student about his relationship with the teacher.
One alleged message from the student said: “There’s hardly anything going on with her, just talking to her about absolute b****x, because I got on great with her, nothing more than that.”
Mr O’Sullivan put it to the teacher that this message could not be reconciled with her claim there was no communication with the student before or after the night they spent together in a hotel room.
The inquiry’s chairperson, Fergal McCarthy, said the panel would reconvene next Monday to hear advice from a legal assessor.
After this, the panel is expected to retire to consider its findings.
