What A Difference A Day Makes: 'Éilis’s death brought a sadness into all of our lives'

Musician Fiach Moriarty tells Helen O’Callaghan about how a tragic global event 20 years ago brought heartbreak to a Dublin neighbourhood.

Musician Fiach Moriarty. Photo: Alf Harvey.

I think the biggest and weirdest day for me was when my sister’s best friend, Éilis Finnegan, died in the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. I was 22. We were all very close and it devastated us really.

They were the Finnegans and we lived in each other’s pockets. Between my mother and their father, they’d drop us to school – every morning we were in the Finnegans’ house, all through primary school and a good bit of secondary.