'Moments of pain are part of the journey we're all on': Niall 'Bressie' Breslin 

In advance of his Cork gig, Bressie talks music, the sad stories he uncovered while researching an institution in his home town, and the decision to go public when he and his partner lost a child to miscarriage 

Bressie plays Live At St Luke's in Cork in April. 

It’s hard to pin Niall Breslin down as one thing these days. Blame a voracious curiosity, or the gig economy, but the man regularly known as Bressie is today as much of an academic, mental health campaigner and documentary maker as he is a musician. That’s without mentioning his former statuses as The Blizzards frontman, Leinster backrow and, as he shares today, a labourer, in one of his previous lives.

Three years into a PhD on early mental health prevention and intervention, and with some 55% of Irish primary schools receiving free mental health education from his organisation, A Lust for Life, he still makes no bones about the realities of just trying to get by.