Proinsias De Rossa has never been shy about his ever-diminishing stammer. In the April issue of the Redemptorist publication Reality, the Dublin Labour MEP tells how he has been very conscious of it from the age of seven. He's not sure if his shyness was the cause of the stammer or if it was the other way around, but he advises a public speaking course for those affected. He has no hangups about it, he says. "It's not a new problem. I'm told that Moses had a stammer. I use the joke that if he hadn't a stammer we'd only have two commandments because he was forced to use a lot of word substitution."