‘Time is precious’ – Former RTÉ star reveals cancer diagnosis just days after retirement

Veteran Irish journalist and recently retired RTÉ correspondent Cathy Halloran has spoken publicly about her breast cancer diagnosis, revealing that the news came just six months after her partner, Nicky Woulfe, was also diagnosed with cancer.

In a candid interview with the RTÉ Guide, Halloran shared how she and her partner are now in remission and how the experience has reshaped her perspective on life, family, and time.

“If you are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, it focuses the mind,” she said. “I feel good now. I don’t feel 64, more like early 50s. And apart from the cancer diagnosis, I’ve been healthy. Time is the most precious thing and with my leaving of RTÉ, I’m no longer tied to the tyranny of time, deadline after deadline. Now it’s time to set my own deadlines.”

Halloran was diagnosed on March 19, 2024, just months after Nicky received his diagnosis in October 2023. She said the biggest challenge was deciding whether to tell their son, John Michael, who had just started college.

“I decided to wait until I knew more: I didn’t want to burst his bubble. But he was wondering why I had been up and down to Cork. I eventually told him then about the cancer diagnosis and the visits to BreastCheck. He just asked me: ‘Mum, will you get better?’ And I said: ‘Absolutely!’”

Determined to return to work, Halloran rejoined RTÉ in May 2024, just in time to cover the Limerick mayoral and local elections. “In many ways, work was therapy for me,” she said.

Born in Dublin, she began her journalism career in the 1980s with The Farmer Magazine and went on to report for the Connacht Tribune newspaper in Galway.

She joined the national broadcaster in October 1987 where she reported for TV and radio across a wide variety of news and events including the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Beef Industry which began at Dublin Castle in 1990. She was appointed to cover the Mid-West in 1993 and has been ever-present across the region since.

After 38 years with RTÉ, including over three decades as Mid-West Correspondent, Halloran officially retired last Friday, May 2, a date she chose to mark the 39th anniversary of her mother Carmel’s passing, with her final bulletin airing that day.

Looking ahead, she plans to travel, spend more time with her family, and perhaps even write a book.

“People say to me that there’s a book in me. I’ve thought about it,” she said.

She lives in Limerick with Nicky and John Michael and says she is looking forward to “some healthy and fulfilling years ahead”, free from deadlines and the demands of daily news.

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