Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for having been absent for a small part of the meeting due to being in the Seanad. I acknowledge what has been said about the welcoming of regulation generally in this jurisdiction. It is not a surprise to me. Having met many of the companies represented here, I was aware it is the case. How strong that regulation is and how much power and resources the regulator has are matters for the committee. I favour strong powers and resources for the regulator.

An issue raised by several speakers is the efforts the various companies make in respect of problem gambling or gambling addiction. I believe those are different categories. The difficulty I have with the responses we have received so far today is the reliance on UK research. For example, the figure of 7,000 was given to my colleague Deputy Carroll MacNeill. To my mind, as that is a figure across the UK and Ireland - I even find the categorisation of the two things together in that order a little unhelpful - it is essentially useless because we do not know how many of those are in Ireland. The constant reliance by betting outfits on UK research is of no assistance to us whatsoever in assessing the depth of the problem in this jurisdiction. We have wildly different regulatory environments. I think we have very different attitudes to gambling generally in the two islands, so I find that research totally unhelpful.

Are any of our guests able to indicate how many Irish-based gamblers have been stopped from gambling? I think the answer will be that they cannot say. It may be an issue on which they can revert to the committee. Why do our guests continue to conflate these two markets that are so different and have such different parameters and habits in the context of gambling? Why do we always talk about the UK and Ireland in the context of gambling rather than talking about Ireland and the Irish people and residents who are gambling here on our guests' various offerings?