Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to speak on the Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Bill 2019. I absolutely accept that we urgently need to address the expanding problem of gambling addiction, and specifically online gambling addiction, that is such a plague for so many families in our country. People can gamble day and night, at work, in their bedrooms and kitchens and anywhere they wish. In the past, people had to go to casinos to play on slot machines or to betting offices to place bets but now they can gamble in the privacy and secrecy of their own homes or at their workplace. The level of availability and the ability to gamble huge sums of money secretly, quietly and within seconds is a matter of enormous concern.

I wish to salute the work carried out by the Aiséirí centre in Cahir and by Sr. Eileen, its founder. It is related to the Aislinn centre in Ballyragget, County Kilkenny, which was also the brainchild of Sr. Eileen Fahey. Sr. Veronica Mangan led the charge there and I was involved in fundraising and attended steering committee meetings to set up the centre for adolescents almost 20 years ago. Any time I meet them, I inquire about how the centre is going. At the time it was set up, the aim was to provide for 15 to 18 year olds. Now the centre is dealing with problems in children who are only ten or 11 years old or even younger. It is a shocking indictment of our society. Aiséirí is a wonderful facility and many people have recovered there, thanks to Sr. Eileen and her team, including board members and volunteers.

The Aislinn Centre was set up to deal with that cohort of young people and they are getting younger and younger with each passing year. That is very sad. We need a serious examination of what has gone wrong and why there is such a proliferation of gambling. This legislation does not deal adequately with that. The Aislinn Centre and Aiséirí have done so much to restore people on their journey into recovery from addictions of all kinds, and there are many. My wife often says that politics is a form of addiction not yet classified by the World Health Organization. She could be right because it certainly is. She said it was bad enough to have one member of the family involved in politics but our daughter has gone into politics and has got elected to the county council. My wife said we were not taking the medication. While I am being jocose about that I do not mean to be jocose or flippant about the legislation and the problem we are discussing.

My good wife is a qualified psychiatric nurse. There are many types of addictions, all kinds of traumatic, desperate, sad and tragic situations. While there might be alcohol or drug addictions, the gambling addiction happens quietly, succinctly and behind closed doors, or not even behind them perhaps in a family setting where a wife or partner, or a husband, did not realise or have any understanding of the extent of his or her partner's gambling addiction.

Statistics and information from Spunout.iereveal there is believed to be 40,000 people in Ireland who have a gambling addiction. I would say those figures are modest, not accurate or up to date. In addition to those statistics, more than €5 billion a year is gambled. We talk about the onset of Brexit, the difficulties it will pose for us and the money that will be needed to deal with the climate change. The gambling of €5 billion a year works out at €10,000 per minute every day. That is according to those official figures. I believe the amount gambled is far more because a great deal of it takes place under the radar and behind closed doors in bedrooms, workplaces or elsewhere. That amount might be only the tip of the iceberg. Approximately €10,000 per minute is gambled every day and there are 60 minutes in the hour. It is mind-boggling. It has been also found that Ireland has the third highest per capitarating in the world for losses in gambling. That is a staggering figure. We were known as the island of saint and scholars and the island of a hundred thousand welcomes, céad míle fáilte, but now Ireland is to be recognised worldwide as having the third highest per capitarating in the world for losses in gambling, so someone is making money somewhere.

Last year Ireland's losses from gambling totalled up to be more than €2.1 billion. If we add to that the €5 billion a year that is gambled, the amount involved is staggering, shocking and one would gasp in disbelief at those figures. That is what is recognised and put down on paper. It is a guesstimate as to the losses involved but I believe the amount to much more.

The most popular method of gambling is online with almost half of gambling losses coming from it, while the second most popular method of gambling is traditional betting. For all its faults, I remember when we would have been setting the spuds in springtime the Grand National would have been on while we would be having the tea and one of us might have got a chance to cycle a bike to a betting office to place a bet on a horse in that race, whether it be the Grand National here or in Aintree. People did simple things like that but now young and old people have a device in their hands, the mobile phone, and they can simply press a button and their bet is taken. People do not have to go to any great effort or consideration to do that. If one is feeling down or depressed and has lost a lot money, one has great hope that the next bet might come right. It is like the slot machines. I often played them as a buachaill óg in Bray or in Youghal, the Minister of State's town, in Ardmore or other places. We would have gone to those places only once a year and we would have given the machine a shake, and knocked in the coins but sin scéal eile. That was simplistic and it was addictive but now people have a deadly tool, their mobile phones. I am always lamenting the lack of broadband but we may have been lucky. Some families may be lucky and have been spared by the fact that broadband does not extend into their homes and that it is not able to be used to wipe out a livelihood, a mortgage and all that has gone into the building up of a family home.

Gambling is easily accessible, especially when Ireland has approximately 1,100 bookmaker shops, 19 private members clubs-casinos, 122 licensed gaming arcades and more than 10,000 gaming machines. I am sure those figures have come from the Library and Research Service or from other statistics. I believe those figures to be far greater. Those are the figures that are registered and that are meant to be legal. I am concerned about all the underhand operations. We see young lads and girls aged 14, 15 or 16 going out playing Gaelic football, hurling or peil na mban, bets are being placed on each other as to who gets the first score and the wining of games. That is frightening, shocking and devastating. It is time we woke up and smelled the coffee and see what is going on.

It is sad to see in towns such as my own town of Clonmel, Tipperary town, Carrick on Suir, Nenagh, Roscrea, Templemore, Cahir and all the others a proliferation of shops closing and then new premises being painted and decorated only to discover that they are betting offices. They are often located adjacent to a public bar. It is serious matter.

As Minister Stanton said in his report in March of this year, devising and implementing a modern licensing and regulatory regime for the Irish gambling industry presents this State with a significant challenge. I fully concur with those words. It is not a significant but a massive challenge of a scale of which we have no understanding. When people have mobiles phones - children want to buy them with their first communion money, although this comes down to parental control - they can get such impulsive and lucrative offers and then they can get into all kinds of trouble. The Minister of State correctly noted that the industry is large, growing and evolving from a largely land-based manifestation to an online one, and therein lies the difficulties. We could deal with the land-based operations and superintendents in the Garda Síochána could check up on them but we do not know what is happening with the online operations. I will not mention any court case but we have seen the horrible stuff that is coming online and actions that young people are encouraged to take. It is shocking and devastating. Despite that we are currently applying a mid-20th century approach to gambling activities that have changed significantly in nature, are increasingly digital in format, and conducted on-line, as I said from the secrecy of the home, a bedroom, a shed or some quiet place in any street or town.

The Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Bill 2019 is, however, as we know, intended to provide some urgent clarifications and amendments to the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956. That legislation was enacted two years before I was born.I compliment the Minister of State on trying to do something with an Act that is so out of date. I am seasca bliain d'aois and the last Act dealing with this issue was enacted two years before I was born. This is a shame on all Governments, especially in the past 30 years, because this problem has been incrementally catching up on us, destroying lives and attacking us like a cancer.

The amendments proposed in the Bill primarily concern improving the regulation of gaming and lotteries, including the updating of stake and prize limits. The Bill is an interim reform measure. Many of the reforms it proposes may be superseded by the comprehensive reforms contemplated in the proposed gambling control Bill. If they are, I welcome that. It is an initial start. Tús maith leath na hoibre ach sé ró-dhéanach.

I am in complete agreement with the Minister when, on announcing the Bill, he stated that he was particularly anxious to address the issue of underage gambling. It is an epidemic. I alluded earlier to the phones and the availability of it. As I understand it, this Bill, therefore, proposes to standardise the minimum age at which a person can take part in gaming and lottery activities under the 1956 Act at 18 years of age. The Bill also proposes to amend the Totalisator Act 1929 to provide for a minimum age of 18 years for betting on the Tote. This brings gaming and lotteries and totalisator regimes into line with the age limits for betting under the Betting Act 1931. That is badly needed also. We need to get real here, not talk of situations that are archaic and well outdated.

I also acknowledge the issues surrounding enforcement. I am concerned about section 4, to which Deputy Pringle referred, that a Garda superintendent can grant a licence. There are considerable concerns over that. Not only will the superintendents become targets for lobbying but it brings into question how the ordinary rank and file gardaí, of whom we have not enough and who are overburdened as it is, will enforce the issue of licences that are being obtained through the courts if the Garda superintendent can grant a licence. I believe this to be a retrograde step. While it might cut down the paperwork, the Garda superintendents have more than enough to do currently to deal with all kinds of behaviour, all kinds of manpower enforcement issues and all kinds of attacks on the public without being in a situation where they can grant licences. This is fraught with dangers because it is so lucrative and has such a bad underbelly and aura about it and they all can be lobbied. I respect the vast majority of superintendents - they have all served us well - but I have seen a situation in my own area where a garda, at superintendent or inspector level, granted a licence for a shooting range that has no planning permission and has no proper scrutiny. These things are fraught with dangers and we need to be able to have recourse to proper planning and development. Such licences should never be granted-----

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