Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not different. A licence was granted without any planning. One must go through all procedures. I am just trying to illustrate my point that this should not be put in the role of Garda superintendents. It should be a proper due process of planning permission that should be advertised and go through the normal channels where the public can make submissions etc.

As the Bills Digest makes clear, the primary responsibility for the enforcement of the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956 falls to An Garda Síochána, which I alluded to, but serious questions about the enforcement of the legislation have been raised already. Tá An Garda Síochána an-ghnóthach ar fad. I salute them. I have supported them all my life but they are very busy people. They cannot be in every corner. They need the support of the public as well. No police force in the world can function without the public. As I said, serious questions have been raised.

It has been noted that the most fundamental regulatory requirements are routinely ignored. Speaking in Seanad Éireann of the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956, Senator David Norris stated that it:

is being flagrantly broken in every single part of the country. Operators are being allowed to openly break the law. Tens of millions of euros in licence fees, moneys which could fund much-needed addiction services, are not being collected.

The Senator is in the Upper House much longer than I am here. Surely this is something we need to address urgently, once and for all.

Generally speaking, it is to be hoped that neither this Bill nor future Bills will be overly punitive in terms of the small betting shop owner, who we recognise, we know and for whom we have a face. We must accept that addiction issues aside, most adults act responsibly when it comes to gambling and, thankfully, do not get so deep into trouble that they need addiction treatment services. We have to allow them to be accommodated also.

There are a plethora of organisations up and down the country, for instance, Seesaw in my own town of Clonmel. These are grappling every day on a voluntary basis. I refer to Taxi Watch and Suicide Watch. There are so many agencies, and so many private individuals as well, who are offering counselling services out there for free and trying to help people to deal with all these catastrophic events that have grown on people silently, secretly and incrementally and taken their lives over. We are plagued with suicides, in the town of Carrick-on-Suir recently and the whole south Tipperary area, and we do not have the resources to deal with it. Many of them are for drug debts and gambling debts that people have inadvertently sleep-walked into. We need decisive, cohesive and dedicated responses from compassionate counselling services. Also, when people do not want to avail of that, we must have the full rigors of the law come down on the barons who are peddling in misery, making significant profits but causing devastation to people's lives and families, to young people and grandchildren and families to come.

I hope this Bill will go some way to deal with this. I look forward to engaging constructively with the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, and the Department on this.

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