Dr. Helen McAvoy:

On the framing of the scale of the problem, there is certainly a proportion of people who experience problem gambling, but there are also moderate-risk and lower risk gamblers, so the numbers are higher than might be expected. There are also all the people around the problem gambler who experience harms from that gambling. Sometimes we focus on just a small number of people and pretend, in a way, that this is a small, rare problem that happens to a restricted group of people, but that is not the case.

I do not know whether the people who have contributed to this debate previously have presented to the committee the figures on gambling among teenagers, which Mr. Grant raised. I did not see it raised in the evidence provided by the commercial operators. The reason we are emphasising this relates to the fact we foresee many problems coming down the line. If that is the level of problem gambling we are seeing in 15- to 16-year-olds, particularly males, we will be in for a much greater problem. That generation will have fallen severely foul of this gap in regulation and the explosion in online media advertising opportunities and the digital world in which they have grown up, compared with the guys who would have grown up going down to their local betting shop. It is important to frame the problem in that way.

On the point about advertising, the UK Gambling Commission's Young People and Gambling study demonstrated a relationship between exposure to gambling advertising and gambling intentions in children aged between 11 and 16. We may not have evidence of that from Ireland but I am satisfied the evidence from the UK demonstrates that relationship exists.