Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill which is about regulation but I would just like to say a few words about gambling. If the figure of 40,000 is correct for those who have a gambling addiction or a gambling problem, or to put it another way are gambling beyond their wealth, we need to think of the absolute scale of that. That number would fill most provincial football or hurling grounds to the roof. It is a huge amount of people. It could relate to three or four times that number in family members affected directly by it. Therefore, it is not an issue we can treat lightly.

The figure that the average we lose per adult is €470 a year is quite startling. I do not know how that figure was put together but I presume that is gambling other than what most of us do in terms of buying lottery tickets etc. in the local club, good cause or charity which is not really gambling. One would give that money and if one were lucky enough to win one would be happy, and if one were not to win that is not why one gave it. One did not give it to win. One did not give it to gamble. One gave it for a cause. Therefore, we must recognise that gambling is a major issue.

I also recognise the Government will not solve the problem and nobody will ever solve the problem. It is not soluble because people will find a way of gambling.

There is a lot of talk here about online gambling, which is particularly insidious and easy. If one wants to gamble, however, one will find a way. People have done it with bingo and in buying lottery tickets. There is no way, therefore, of preventing people from losing money on gambling. We can reduce the incidence but we cannot eliminate it. We have to be realistic about that. It is not something that I take easily because I have seen the effects of gambling and of hidden gambling. I have known people, male and female, who would be the last people in the world, male and female, one would expect to gamble who I found out afterwards were gambling. There is a saying in Irish -"Níl a fhios ag aon duine cá luíonn an bhróg ar an duine eile" - that one never knows where the shoe is laid. One finds that people that one thought were in comfortable circumstances were up to their necks in debt because of gambling.

This leads me to how one helps those who will inevitably succumb, no matter what laws or precautions we bring in. We think that we can solve everything by law but we cannot. What sort of attitudes are we going to take to people who have an addiction to gambling? In more recent times we have been more realistic about addiction to drink in that it is a disease that needs treatment. We have plenty of treatment centres around the country. We recognise that it is not so simple as to just blame people, we must try to help people to solve their problem. At a certain level of addiction it is hard to put culpability in there because the person loses control of their own actions. That is what an addiction is all about. We understand the same thing about drug addicts. Many people say we should get the drug pushers but should not start locking up the drug addict; instead try to get treatment and support for them and wean them off the drugs. I hope that society would take the same attitude to those who have an addiction to gambling, that it would be seen as a medical condition, like all addictions, and that we deal with it medically not criminally.

We have all seen sad cases in the newspapers over the years where people have been brought to court for theft, particularly theft against their employers. We have even seen people in the public service caught up in this particular situation. Inevitably, when one starts digging behind the stories, in a high percentage of cases one finds that the person has a gambling addiction. It is important, therefore, that we address and debate this issue and try to see how we change societal attitudes so that we can deal with it in the way that all addictions should be dealt with, which is by trying to assist the person.

I pay tribute here tonight to all of the people in Gamblers Anonymous and all of the different groups and charities who quietly help people with a gambling addiction. It is insidious and in certain ways it is worse than a drinking addiction. There comes a point when, if one keeps drinking, one will physically collapse. With gambling, one can keep going and going until one has taken everything, not only in one's own life, but in the lives of those around the person in money terms. I have seen that happen.

I believe, however, that there are small steps we can take to reduce the normalisation of gambling. The only gambling I ever do is to buy lottery tickets in local charities. People might think I am very prissy in that I have no interest in gambling on horses. I do not buy the national lottery tickets or Euromillions as they hold no attraction for me. I do not know what is in me but that type of gambling frightens me. There are people who are attracted to this gambling and often these are people with little means who dream some day that they will hit the Euromillions jackpot or whatever. They spend beyond their means on a fairly consistent basis. These people would not have an addiction but would be spending beyond their means.

We also have to recognise that there has been a huge increase in the talk about gambling, odds and bets. I do not like listening to radio or television commentators talking about the odds on various events, such as who is going to get the first goal, or will score within ten minutes of the beginning of a match, or whatever. It is not good practice and is unnecessary. For 99% of the public it just washes over them. For those who have this addiction, however, it is an unnecessary normalisation of gambling on every kind of conceivable thing that one could dream of. If one asked me ten years ago about football betting, I would have thought one might bet on the result of a match. There must be between 50 to 100 ways of betting on any one match and even during the matches the betting is going on and that is not going to be stopped. The promotion of that, however, on radio and television is not positive and is something we should talk to organisations, such as the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, about because it is not conducive to addressing this issue.

There is a lot of talk tonight about online betting and I accept that that is the big one. It is very hard to control that. With drink ads, one has the person selling the drink as hard as they can, and then at the end of the ad they talk about being aware of problem drinking or whatever it is they say. Similarly, one has these ads promoting lotteries - I am not talking about the lottery in one's local club but the big national and European lotteries - and then at the bottom of these ads there is the warning to beware of abusing this. Why do all of this advertising if one is not trying to suck people in? It is a contradiction in terms and I do not buy the industry's argument that if we put a little statement at the end, that is going to frighten off the person with the addiction. That is slightly disingenuous.

We need a debate about how we treat the people who will inevitably get into trouble and who we will never prevent from getting into trouble. One could bring all the legislation one wants into this House and it would be about as effective as prohibition was in America, a point which I recognise. I am not a killjoy for people who bet responsibly. For the vast majority of people who have a bit of a flutter, it does not impact on their resources or their family's resources. That is not a problem. We have to decide how we are going to support and help those who do get into trouble, who get the addiction, and whether to criminalise them - which I think is wrong - or try to support them and wean them off the addiction. That is a debate we need to have in the near future. Is the State willing, for example, to levy the industry through the tax system to provide supports for people who get into gambling difficulties and the families who suffer hugely from the effects of gambling?

On the other hand, I say to the Minister that I like section 9, if I understand it correctly. If we look at the big scene in this, and then look at what many people have lotteries and draws for, my big concern and that of others relates more to the charity regulation side of this business, to ensure that moneys collected by local lotteries go to the sources intended. I have always had the view that for the big corporates or somebody on a national body running a raffle, it is right that there is a huge amount of control. In the case of a local parish draw, however, the fewer controls there the better. People know who they are their giving money to. Normally, it is well announced how much money has been made, the cause is fairly transparent to one's parish and people know exactly what is going on. I welcome section 9 where it is stated that one can have a lottery.

We might allow up to a tenner for the price of the ticket. This is not gambling. The Minister of State knows it is not. I get people coming in to me all the time trying to sell me tickets. A certain group sticks me for nearly a fiver a week. It is harmless and I know it is for a very good cause. I admire the tenacity with which they have gone about collecting a massive sum of money for a very genuine and good cause within one of the parishes in my area. I do not expect to win and do not care if I win. If they come back some day and tell me I have won €50 or €100 or €200, I will be happy. I do not do it for that. Those types of lotteries are very different. They are not the ones that cause addictions. That is not where someone goes who has an addiction, looking for a lottery here and there for a local cause. That is not what happens. I welcome the very pragmatic approach the Minister of State is taking in separating the bigger, higher-level problem from the ordinary thing we all do to collect money for the million good causes in our parishes, towns and villages, where it is done for the cause and the prize is not the inducement. The real prize is the cause for which the money is being collected.

I welcome the Bill. If I am reading his body language right, the Minister of State recognises that the Bill is limited in what it is going to achieve and does not claim to be the solution to all problems. On the wider issue of problem gambling, we need a debate and we need to set the tone of how society is going to deal with this. Advertising and promotion of big-time gambling is something I have a bit of an issue with and I think we have to look at it.

See this speech in context