Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have some comments and suggestions. We have all seen in our constituencies and working lives the detrimental impact of gambling on mental and physical health and the health of a person's family given the catastrophes it can cause for families. In my view, this is because of the overexposure of people, particularly young people, to gambling. These pieces of technology have made gambling so accessible. It involves our phones. As we know, for very young children and adults, phones are part of the everyday pieces of technology they carry around with them. We can turn on our televisions and see advertising from many of the gambling companies represented here, switch on our phones and be exposed to more gambling or walk down our main streets and see gambling shops everywhere. We took the very brave decision to ban the advertising of tobacco and now we can walk into a shop that used to have cigarette machines or displays and not see anything advertising tobacco. It was done for a very good reason, namely, the detrimental effect of tobacco on people's health, the fatalities it has caused across Ireland and the pressures it has put our health system under. If we were to remove that overexposure or any exposure to gambling, what would be the response of the witnesses to that as a measure to protect people from falling into the depths of problem gambling?