David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise on behalf of members who must leave, but the Dáil and the Seanad are now in session. We are in the middle of dealing with the Gambling Control Bill and last week a number of operators and interested bodies and parties came before the committee. The Remote Gambling Association spoke about how European data protection legislation prevented the sharing of personal and private information between operators. It arose with regard to gamblers wanting to self-exclude themselves from betting. Using Denmark as an example, it is the view of the organisation that the proposed office for gambling control Ireland, or the body appointed by the regulator, would be permitted under current data protection law to collect information from operators to compile a central database.

The database could then be accessed by operators to check whether an individual had self-excluded from a competitor. The importance is obviously that if somebody has self-excluded from one operator, it is in his or her own interest not to engage with another and start gambling again. Would it be possible to do something such that, say, if I were to self-exclude from Paddy Power online, that information would be provided for a central operator and shared with all other operators? Then, if I were to decide to go to another operator, the central operator could point out that I had self-excluded from another operator and could not use its services either.