Irish Examiner view: Goodbye to an Irish heroine

Some of those in attendance along the streets of Bray threw flowers on the hearse as it passed — a striking illustration of sympathy with a heroine gone too soon, of solidarity with her grieving family, and of the enormous loss which the nation has suffered. Picture: Charles McQuillan/Getty

People turned out in force yesterday along the streets of Bray to offer a final farewell to Sinéad O’Connor, who died last month. The singer-songwriter passed away in London, but her funeral cortege drove through the Wicklow town where she had lived for 15 years.

Her untimely death set off a whole cottage industry of opinion pieces and personal recollections across media platforms for the last couple of weeks, with many commentators striving to establish their own links to O’Connor. In that commentary, a long, successful career as a singer and musician was analysed and appraised at length — not always generously, it must be said — while her life was also held up as an emblem of the struggles of Irish women over recent decades.