An emotional soul

Sinéad O’Connor talks to Arts Editor Marc O’Sullivan about overcoming mental illness

SINEAD O’Connor lives in a terraced house in Bray, Co Wicklow. A handwritten sign on her front door warns that the gardaí will be called on any “hacks or photographers” who arrive uninvited. O’Connor’s relationship with the media has often been fractious. Still, she is all smiles when she answers the door at 10.30am. She makes tea and lights the first of several cigarettes as she settles down in her music room to talk, for a good hour and more, about her mental illness, God and organised religion, and the subject on which she has been particularly vocal: child abuse.

O’Connor is to perform at Triskel Christchurch in Cork tonight in a fundraiser for Mad Pride, the charity founded by the late mental health campaigner, John McCarthy, and now carried on by his son David. Her involvement came about through her social media habit: David McCarthy asked her to perform via Twitter.