Ronan Guilfoyle on the music for his grandfather - a 1916 Rising veteran

Alan O’Riordan talks to musician Ronan Guilfoyle about a piece he wrote to commemorate his grandfather — a 1916 veteran who was in Collins’s ‘squad’

IN THIS centenary year, there are many looking back at grandparents and great grandparents, and considering their lives, and even their roles, in 1916 and what came after.

Ronan Guilfoyle, the jazz musician, is one such. His grandfather, Joe Guilfoyle, played a more dramatic role than most, first as an idealistic teenager in the Rising, then, later, as a member of the ‘Squad’, Michael Collins’s band of intelligence operatives.