It seems ironic that a doctor had to call to Sinead O'Connor's hotel room during this interview. No, not to stop her tearing up another picture of the Pope, but because a "slight infection" had earlier led to her losing her voice. No doubt there are many people who would love Sinead's voice to yield to silence - permanently. Happily that ain't about to happen, though interviewers are now warned she "will not discuss her family or private life, only music"; which sounds fine in theory, but turns out to be untenable, given that so much of Sinead's music stems from familial tensions and her "private" view of the world. Then again, Sinead's view of the world is obviously changing. Now 31 and marking her tenth year in the music business with the release of The Best Of Sinead O'Connor, a new single, This IS A Rebel Song, and a new record label, she sure seems intent on setting her career back on track. Even to the degree that she has ditched long-time manager and one-time lover Facthna O'Ceallaigh and signed with Paul McGuinness, manager of U2, whom she accused of "controlling" the Irish music industry.

"But I never said anything about Paul!" she retorts. "And although I love Fachtna, we had communication problems so we ended our working relationship. I also did want to go in another direction, concentrate on music, leave my past behind. So I called Paul, which is something I thought of doing 10 years ago, but didn't want to hurt Fachtna because there were all those tensions between them. So this is another sign of my becoming an adult, recognising that Principle management is a powerful organisation."

Powerful, yes, - but no, Paul McGuinness doesn't have contacts in the Vatican, yet, and despite media claims to the contrary, Sinead "has no desire to apologise to the Pope" for tearing up his photograph, though this wasn't a "personal attack" on the Pontiff. "It was a war-cry, the opening of debate and, as such, is one thing I don't regret," she says. "Particularly in terms of the way we now discuss subjects that were buried when I was young, like child abuse. I think I had a hand in opening up those discussions. And I don't believe God lives outside people, which was another part of my tearing up that picture. It was that idea I was tearing up. God is inside people. Yet I'm not hugely anti-Catholic. I see the good in religion as well. Religion is like music. Neither can save the world, or provide answers, but they can put their arms around you and keep you company."

Extending this analogy between music and religion, Sinead "absolutely" agrees with Bob Marley, who claimed that the job of the singer is to heal. "In the first place singing, to me, is an effort to heal one's self. I can't heal you but I can heal myself and that shows you can do it, too," she elaborates. "So a singer shines a light on the fact that there is a healing journey that can be taken. Like, when I was growing up I listened to Bob Dylan, who was obviously suffering, and an album like Blood On The Tracks let me know I wasn't alone."

Sinead's need for healing stems, in part, from the "abuse" she claims to have suffered at the hands of her mother - a subject she directly addresses on the album Universal Mother, which is her Blood On The Tracks. "The reason I am who I am, as an artist, has always been about my upbringing. That's what I'm writing about, and healing from, and have become: someone who documents the healing journey, musically. "When people know my music, my actions make sense; when you don't, they look like just f---ing actions," she says, also admitting that "yes" the picture she tore was taken by her mother when the Pope visited Ireland in 1979. "But I'm not sure if this was as important a part of it all as the power of an Irish woman making that gesture. That, in itself, was frightening for a lot of people. Yet, as I say, it makes absolute sense in the context of my music and who I am."

Sinead regards herself, fundamentally, as a "pagan", a person "interested in the worship of God as a mother, God as a female principle as well as male". "I've always been very religious," she says. "I do love God and see ripping up that picture as an act of love for God, for Catholic people who were, I felt, being duped along these lines."

Sinead's seemingly pathological need not to live a lie also dictates that she can't listen to her earliest recordings without feeling "embarrassed" because she believes that back then her voice wasn't "true to who I am" and didn't reach a level of "authenticity" until Universal Mother, which was largely the product of a breakdown. "I used to sing in this American accent and, as a singer, it's dangerous to use your voice that way, because singing in someone else's accent you imprison your voice, physically, psychologically, spiritually, every way. The best thing is to sing in your own accent," she suggests. "But when I say I had a breakdown, I don't mean a nervous breakdown, though it was reported that way. I mean there was a breaking-down process. I was de-constructing to find myself and Universal Mother represents all that, the stripping away of false personae."

Sinead also cut herself off from everything I did as crap. "But now I see that something like The Last Day of Our Acquaintance is a great song! And I really was astonished at how much I liked myself when I listened to this Best Of album! Especially given that, as I explained earlier, the songs are like diary entries. How many of us can read our old diaries without being embarrassed?"

Not many. Particularly if those diary entries were merely manifestations of rage. However, on her latest mini-album, Gospel Oak, Sinead sings in a more humane, even gentle fashion. "That's part of the healing process," she says, smiling. "It's too painful to walk around in rage. That's why there are certain songs I don't do live, as in Troy, because that song was very much about my mother and I don't f---king feel like that any more. Not that my rage is gone; it's just that back then I was an open wound, as anyone would be who grew up in the circumstances I grew up in. But that's something I've left behind. So, yes, Gospel Oak is a gentle record because that's where I'm at now."

Nevertheless, Sinead's "healing process" could hardly be said to be helping certain Unionists who describe her single This IS A Rebel Song as pro-republican, a perspective that probably has been influenced by her sympathetic-to-the-IRA statements of the early 1980s. "When I was 18 I was in love with a Provo and I wanted him to love me and said all that shit I have since gone out of my way to retract," she responds. "But in relation to This IS A Rebel Song, I wrote it in order to generate debate, because artists should say what isn't allowed to be said. There is this war in this country we're not allowed to talk about, because of the existence of terrorism, lest we be associated with one side or the other.

"That is exactly what has happened to me as a result of this song. In fact, it's a love song about a relationship I had with a man and it comments on how this is like the relationship between Ireland and England. But even though it calls for England to give Ireland back and allow all the people who live in this land to govern it, in that I include loyalists who, I believe, should bring their political and religious influence into a United Ireland. Yet certain Unionists think I'm suggesting they should give up their identity. I'm not. This song calls for a marriage, not divorce. And it's a `rebel' song only because it rebels against this fear we have of talking about the situation."

This IS A Rebel Song also sums up what Sinead O'Connor says is her response to those who suggest she should shut up and just sing. "How do you do that? It's a physical impossibility!" she says, laughing. "They say if you want fame and hit records you should keep your mouth shut. What a load of shite! The fact that I'm not a politician doesn't mean I have any less right to speak than anyone else. I may not have the answers but, at best, my songs can create discussions and, as I say, that is the best artists can do."