Do we like them?

Do we like Dolores O'Riordan?

Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company found and a record of speaking up for survivors, held back by one admitted airport incident and a thin list of verified charity work.

Dolores O'Riordan grew up in Ballybricken, County Limerick, singing for relatives at home and writing songs as a teenager, with Duran Duran and The Smiths in her ears. She walked into an audition for a Limerick band, told the three blokes “show me what you got”, and became their singer. The band was soon renamed The Cranberries and signed to Island Records while the members were still teenagers.

The Cranberries became an international act and sold millions of records. O'Riordan's best-known song, “Zombie”, she described in a 2017 interview as “metaphoric for all the pain that was being caused”. The band split in 2003 and later reformed, and she also made solo records and spent much of her last fifteen years in Canada.

The big stain is November 2014, on an Aer Lingus flight from New York to Shannon. She later admitted assaulting a garda and two airport police officers, and obstructing the garda, at Ennis District Court. The judge recorded no conviction on condition she pay €6,000 to the court poor box, citing her early plea, her written apologies to the victims and her clean record. A flight attendant separately sued her estate, alleging O'Riordan stamped on her foot; O'Riordan had denied it, and in 2023 the case settled with no admission of liability.

Earlier, in 2004, a former nanny sued O'Riordan and her husband in the High Court, alleging false imprisonment and breach of contract. The judge found against the nanny on the main claim and awarded her €1,500 over mislaid belongings. That reads as a messy employment spat the court mostly did not side with, not a pattern of mistreating staff.

There is nothing new on her lately. The most recent legal matter found was the 2023 settlement of the flight attendant's claim against her estate.

The good stuff is real but mostly personal and artistic: a voice that people still cover, a huge catalogue, and a willingness to speak out when that was hard. I couldn't verify a long list of charity work from reputable sources, so I won't pad it. Fans love her for the music and for the honesty about what she'd been through.