Sinéad O'Connor

‘She blazed a trail’: thousands gather for

funeral of Sinéad O’Connor in Ireland
Crowds pack seafront in Bray, County Wicklow, to bid farewell to
singer and celebrate her life

01:11

'Love Sinéad O’Connor for ever': thousands gather in Ireland for singer's funeral – video

Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent

@rorycarroll72
Tue 8 Aug 2023 13.42 BST
The crowd started gathering before sunrise, some coming to grieve Sinéad
O’Connor’s death, others to celebrate her life, and all wanting to say
goodbye.

By midday on Tuesday thousands were lining the seafront in Bray, the

County Wicklow town the Irish singer had called home, to greet the
funeral cortege.

Police motorcycles cleared a path for a van with speakers which played
Bob Marley & The Wailers’ song Natural Mystic. The hearse appeared,
bedecked in flowers tossed by the crowd. Vehicles with O’Connor’s
relatives followed.

As the procession approached O’Connor’s former home people applauded.

Others sang Nothing Compares 2 U and held up banners: “Thanks Sinéad.
Rest in power.” “When words fail, music speaks.”

Candles, poems, tears and smiles completed an elegy in sunshine for a

singular, ethereal voice that had sung and spoken about love and
darkness.

Earlier, Umar al-Qadri, the chief imam at the Islamic Centre of Ireland,
oversaw prayers at a private funeral service.

“Just as Sinéad O’Connor brought diverse souls together through her art,
so have you orchestrated a symphony of unity during her final journey,”
he told mourners. O’Connor had used the Muslim name Shuhada’ Sadaqat
after she converted to Islam.

‘Sinéad became one of our own,’ said one local councillor in Bray. Photograph: Niall
Carson/PA

Police found the singer unresponsive in a south London flat on 26 July,

prompting worldwide grief and tributes. She was 56. The cause of death
remains unclear.
The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, and his wife, Sabina, attended the
funeral service. “The outpouring of grief and appreciation of the life and
work of Sinéad O’Connor demonstrates the profound impact which she
had on the Irish people,” Higgins said.

O’Connor’s family had invited the public to pay their final respects on the
Bray seafront, south of Dublin, where she had lived for 15 years. “With this
procession, her family would like to acknowledge the outpouring of love
for her from the people of Co Wicklow and beyond, since she left last week
to go to another place.”

Cafes played her songs on a loop, the music seeping out on to the
promenade. The Irish singers Bono and Bob Geldof were reportedly
among the crowd.

“What can I say? Thank you Sinéad,” said Gemma Byrne, 47, who with
three friends held a banner that said exactly that. “We grew up with her.
She said what we felt but didn’t have the courage to say. She took the shit
for it.”

Her friend Christine Joyce, 54, said O’Connor had made unforgettable
music and highlighted clerical sexual abuse, and health issues, such as
menopause and hysterectomies. “She blazed a trail for me about what it
was like to grow old as a woman. I’m feeling really emotional. I heard her
sing Molly Malone on the radio – such a trite song and I was bawling my
eyes out.”

Gemma Byrne, Christina Joyce, Grainne Rafferty and Mandy O’Brien in Bray awaiting the
funeral cortege. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Mourners spoke of personal connections to O’Connor. “My daughter saw

her on TV when she was six and was mesmerised by her for the rest of her
life,” said Teresa Haynes, 75, holding a white rose. Haynes’s daughter,
Tess, killed herself four years ago. Coming to Bray was an homage to both
women, she said.
Rosita Stripinene, 50, from Lithuania, recalled the shock and glory of
seeing O’Connor for the first time around 1990. “Living in the Soviet
Union, she was one of the first foreign singers we saw. All my childhood I
was looking at her beautiful eyes, her amazing eyes.”

O’Connor never fully reconciled to fame and stardom after her hit Nothing
Compares 2 U. She had periods of mental ill-health and a turbulent private
life, but found a refuge of sorts in Bray.

There was a mix of grief and celebration in the town. Photograph: Bryan Meade/EPA

Erika Doyle, a Green party councillor for the town, said: “After she moved
in, very quickly the novelty factor wore off and people just did what Irish
people tend to do – remained unimpressed, but in the best sense of the
word.

“She became one of our own and someone we tried to protect from the
less nice aspects of fame, like obsessive fans or paparazzi. There was an
unspoken agreement that she was one of ours and that we would look out
for her.”

The mix of grief and celebration felt appropriate, said Doyle. “It probably
reflects her. I’m not sure she would want a crowd of sad faces dressed in
black.”

O’Connor’s seaside idyll was shattered in January 2022 when her 17-year-
old son Shane was found dead in Bray after leaving a hospital where he
had been on suicide watch. She had three other children.

Jackie Fleming, 60, from Drogheda, had risen at 5.30am to join the
crowds. “The abuse she suffered as a girl – I could relate to that. And then
losing her son – I think I’d have died of a broken heart too.”

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