Stammering is a speech disorder that affects over 50,000 people in Ireland. This is equivalent to 7–8% of the disabled population1 and 1% of the overall adult population in the country2.
The above is a depiction of nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell speaking to the United States Congress in the 1880s. Parnell had an “acute” stammer which affected his ambitions in the public realm3.
What is stammering?
A stammer is the unity of two halves: impediment and disability.
Impediment refers to the actual physical symptoms brought about by neurological differences. These symptoms include repetitions, prolongations, blocks, and in some people, straining and twitching. Each person who stammers (‘PWS’) has a different set of symptoms which can be incredibly variable even within the same individual, changing in character and severity from one sentence to the next. Currently, conventional speech therapy has a two-thirds relapse rate, making focus on medical treatment alone futile4.
Disability refers to the restrictions imposed on PWS by society, as well as the mental, emotional, and behavioural consequences of those restrictions5. A PWS is considered unable to “exercise sovereign control over their body”, causing people to doubt their rationality, competency, and intellect6. This translates to reduced earnings7; ostracisation from verbally demanding careers like sales, teaching, and law8; and higher-than-average rates of social anxiety, depression, and sleep problems9.
Above is a video of Portuguese scholar and political figure Joacine Katar Moreira stammering on national television. Her suitability for the post of parliamentarian was doubted due to her speech impediment10, with some even accusing her of faking it for sympathy votes11.
In law
Stammering is an ‘invisible’ or ‘hidden’ disability – a disability that is not immediately apparent, and largely goes unaddressed. It falls within the “wide and all-encompassing definition” of disability as provided in s. 2 of the Employment Equality Acts 1998–201512.
In 2017, the Workplace Relations Commission awarded a rail technician with a stammer €50,000 for “unfair dismissal and disability discrimination, after finding that his employer had failed to discharge its obligation under… s. 16 to make adequate enquiries concerning the impact of his stammer and his ability to do his job”13.
s. 16 obliges an employer to recruit, promote, retain, and/or train a PWS if the PWS willingly performs the agreed terms of a post and is fully competent. A PWS is still considered fully competent if they require “special treatment or facilities”, as long as it comes at no significant and unreasonable cost to the employer.
s. 101(b)(c) of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022 requires that 6% of public sector employees be people with disabilities. This means that approximately 0.45% of all public sector positions in the Republic should be populated by people who stammer. Unlike other European Union countries, Ireland has no similar private sector quota14.
Accommodations
Employees, employers, and recruiters alike are under-educated on the topic of invisible disabilities and how to approach them in the workplace. The onus lies on all parties to initiate and maintain conversations about disability in the workplace, including the implementation of accommodations, seven of which are listed below:
- Allow for in-person interviews and assessments if the individual finds the virtual format more prone to miscommunication.
- Allow for the use of written communication formats in place or alongside verbal communication where not essential to the role.
- Where verbal communication is necessary, alleviate time pressure where possible, such as providing an extra time allowance in interviews.
- Allow the individual to stammer openly, as suppression of stammering leads PWS to “experience significantly higher levels of adverse impact”15.
- Train interviewers, recruiters, and key decision-makers on stammering so they do not misinterpret symptoms as intoxication/drunkenness, incompetence, nervousness, or lack of preparation.
- Permit or provide (if funding allows) assistive speech technologies where the individual finds them helpful.
- Allow the individual to bypass artificial intelligence (AI) voice systems that do not recognise dysfluent speech.
Further resources
- Georgina Dunlevy, Employment and Education Programme Coordinator at the Irish Stammering Association.
- Employers For Change, “an employer disability information service”.
- Work and Access – Communication Support Grant.
- disAbility Legal Network.
- FAQs – Irish Stammering Association.
- Brennan, Darran. “Rights and Protections for Employees with Invisible Disabilities.” Irish Employment Law Journal 18, no. 3 (2021): 59. ↩︎
- Walsh, Barry. “Irish Stammering Association: Supporting over 50,000 People in Ireland Who Stammer.” Focus on Diversity, May 30, 2025. ↩︎
- Eagle, Chris. ““Stuttistics”: On Speech Disorders in Finnegans Wake.” 84–92. ↩︎
- Alatawi, Manal, and Judith Good. “Between therapy and reality.” Journal of Fluency Disorders 85 (September 2025): 3. ↩︎
- Mladenov, Teodor. “The Social Model of Disability, The Independent Living, And the Idea of ‘Care’.” Critique and Humanism 55 (March 2021): 10. University of Dundee. ↩︎
- St. Pierre, Joshua. Cheap Talk. University of Michigan Press, 2022. 14. ↩︎
- Dwan O’Reilly, Jeff. “Voiceless: The Economic Consequences of a Stammering Population.” Student Economic Review vol. XXXiii (2019): 105. ↩︎
- Bricker-Katz, Geraldine, Michelle Lincoln, and Steven Cumming. “Stuttering and work life: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.” Journal of Fluency Disorders 38, no. 4 (2013): 343. ↩︎
- Mori, Koichi. “Developmental stuttering as a neurodiverse speech style.” Acoustical Science and Technology 46, no. 1 (2025): 66. ↩︎
- Mattia, Bianca Rosina. “Racism, spaces of representation and the voice of black women in Portugal.” Nau Literária 17, no. 2 (2021). ↩︎
- Sampaio, Gustavo. “Joacine Katar Moreira do Livre só começou a gaguejar na presente campanha eleitoral?” Polígrafo, October 2, 2019. ↩︎
- Brennan, Darran. “Rights and Protections for Employees with Invisible Disabilities.” Irish Employment Law Journal 18, no. 3 (2021): 61–64. ↩︎
- Fitzgerald, Kyran. “Large award for rail technician dismissed over safety concerns with his stammer.” Industrial Relations News 45 (2017): 30–31. ↩︎
- Van Aswegen, Jennifer. “Disabling discourses and charitable model of disability: labour market activation for people with disabilities, Ireland – a critical policy analysis.” Disability & Society 35, no. 3 (2020): 449. ↩︎
- Chang, Soo-Eun, et al. “Stuttering: Our Current Knowledge, Research Opportunities, and Ways to Address Critical Gaps.” Neurobiology of Language 6 (2025): 20. ↩︎
