Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to hear that. The Minister of State might develop the point.

When the Bill is eventually brought before the Oireachtas, we will have to remember that it will primarily be to prevent harmful gambling and regulate the many people who enjoy gambling safely. Many people gamble responsibly and there is no proposal to ban gambling. There are people involved in the gambling industry who have in the absence of legislation followed codes of conduct on age limits.

However, we cannot rely on people. Codes of conduct often fall significantly short when relying on people's goodwill and voluntary actions, and that rarely has the desired effect. There must be a lot more than that. I refer to firm, robust legislation and regulation.

There is a deficit of data and information. There has been some criticism of the statistics recently released by the HSE, which are to some extent at variance with the manner in which data were collected in other jurisdictions. That is important because accurate data are required to act as a basis for policy formation so that we have a clear picture of the situation. As I understand it, the criteria used to assess and identify the scale of problem gambling were different from those used in similar surveys in the North of Ireland and by the British Gambling Commission. We had a discussion on data collation and its uses by companies at a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality a few weeks ago. I accept the HSE and its ability to collect data is not the responsibility of the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, but a whole-of-Government approach is required to tackle the issue. In addition to gambling legislation we must consider how we tackle problem gambling.

Many companies appear to be very good at figuring out who are profitable gamblers. They quickly identify somebody who has a chain of three or four winners in which they have been very accurate at beating the odds. I do not wish to make folk heroes of any of those people. They are just people who are gambling and it is not as if they are people to be admired. All the forums are very skilled at identifying people, but they are not as skilled at identifying people who are losing. I sense that the companies have a lot more data than we realise and they could be doing a lot more with the information they have to tackle problem gamblers. We have all read stories about people who have had big problems such as Tony O'Reilly who managed to avoid betting for a while at the time of his wedding and then he got sucked into it and tried to bet on the Derby to make up what he had lost, which he did, but I am sure there were countless times that he did not and ultimately he did not. There are many similar stories. If the companies can do more about it they should.

The recent meeting to which I referred was attended by Dr. Crystal Fulton, associate professor at the school of information and communication studies at University College Dublin. She conducted research in the field of problem gambling.In her opening statement she said:

Participants described harmful gambling as having a profound, life-changing impact on them, whether gamblers or their families and friends. Significantly, they believed the Government could, and should, act to protect them and those at future risk of a gambling problem.

While I again acknowledge the good intentions behind the Bill and the fact that it is a good Bill, it is not comprehensive enough and a much broader Bill such as the 2013 Bill is required.

A point I raised previously is that an all-Ireland approach to problem gambling is also important. I recently launched an all-island policy document on problem gambling with Ms Sinéad Ennis, MLA, our spokesperson on the issue in the North. I also acknowledge the work done by Ms Lynn Boylan on this subject at a European level. I am not sure whether we sent a copy of that policy document to the Minister but, if not, I will make sure it is sent to him. Two separate gambling prevalence surveys carried out in the North produced similar results, identifying a problem gambling rate of more than 2%, which is significant although it might not sound like much. I imagine the figure here is similar even if that is not apparent from the HSE data. We need a dedicated problem gambling survey which can withstand a straight comparison with the North, Scotland, Wales, England and other comparable jurisdictions. The HSE data are nearly five years old and the picture could well have changed since then. From what we do know, the South has the highest online gambling losses in the world per capitaand the third highest gambling losses overall per capita. The scale of the problem we face is significant and perhaps growing.

On Committee Stage, I intend to introduce an amendment calling for a report on some of those issues to be done within three months. The Bill is welcome. I accept the Minister of State is committed to this area but we are all waiting for the big one and that needs to come. We need to see the detail of it and we need to have it brought before the Dáil and the committee. I hope that will happen soon.

See this speech in context