At the tender age of seven, Ronan was told he was to play the uilleann pipes. Not knowing anyone else his age doing that at the time, he was quite surprised and not terribly enthusiastic.

Three decades later he is a very happy lad indeed. He has close friends the world over and has visited every continent except Antarctica - all thanks to a little bag of sticks, seven reeds and some very smart parents!

Ronan was taken under the various wings of the old masters who showed him quickly what was nice - and what wasn't! While his heart is most definitely set on playing old flat pitch uilleann pipes, he loves to throw himself headlong into anything new which comes along. He has been involved in over 75 album recordings since his first venture into the studio in 1982 and has collaborated with many of the top artists playing traditional Irish music, classical, pop, jazz and country.

As well as playing pipes, flute and whistle, Ronan makes up tunes all on his own, creating strange (and sometimes very loud) sounds on computers in his recording studio An Tubar Fuaime. Ronan's music has appeared in many films including Circle of Friends, Rob Roy, The Secret of Roan Inish and The Gangs of New York.

To non-musicians he is best known for his membership of the diminutive cult super-group CRAN and as the original piper with both Riverdance and the Afro Celt Sound System. To this day his friendship and musical collaboration with fiddler and flute player Peter O'Loughlin is fêted as one of the most enduring partnerships in Irish traditional music.

He lives in Conamara in the west of Ireland in a lovely bright dry house with his partner, his son and daughter, some small wild cats, a few foxes and pheasants, a huge heron and a herd of hares. It has recently been put about that Ronan may be the tallest Leprechaun in the world, almost twice the height of Ireland's smallest piper! He likes to eat ice cream and to go flippering in the sea on hot days.