Ray Kennedy has shared the emotional reason behind his decision to leave Sky News in the early 2000s.
The broadcaster was on the road and spent a lot of time travelling, missing key moments with his young family.
He decided to press the brakes after an interaction with his little girl left him speechless.
“I was with Sky and travelling a lot. My daughter was born around that time, it was 2004/2005 and I spent a lot of time going back and forth to London,” he told the RTE Guide.
“I remember one morning she came into the kitchen, she was only about two at this stage, and she came in looking for her brother but the way she said it, it was like she was asking a stranger.
“Whatever she said, I realised she didn’t really know me or who I was, so from that point on things had to change.”
Ray immediately knew something had to give, and this is when he made the conscious decision to focus more on his career in Ireland – which lead him back to RTE, where he now anchors the Six One News.
“I refocused what I was doing and we started having much more time together, time in the park, that sort of thing. Kids are everything,” he said.
“I remember that day so clearly and I just refocused my time on my family from that point onward while also trying to keep up the work.
“I concentrated my efforts on reporting what was going on in Ireland and that kind of brought me on the route back to RTÉ.”