Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I would first like to note that this Bill was published on Friday afternoon. It is simply not acceptable that we would effectively get two working days to look over a Bill of this importance. It is an unfortunate example of how rushed the Government legislative process is coming up to Christmas. I hope that Committee Stage will be taken in the new year so it can be given proper scrutiny. The Minister of State might confirm that when he responds.

The Bill is largely welcome. It is a big step forward in how the State regulates the gambling industry, which has been patchwork at best for decades. Problem gambling destroys lives, families and communities. To date, we have largely let the gambling industry run rampant throughout the country, with the few restrictions that are currently in place on its operation often being blatantly ignored, unenforced and easily worked around. A ban on casinos, for example, led to private members-only clubs being established, which are effectively casinos with an entrance fee. There are currently 36 in operation around the country, with the highest concentration in Dublin city centre, which is no coincidence. Under section 20 of the Betting Act, there is a ban on bookies displaying a list of the terms or odds for a bet on a particular match. Anyone can easily walk past their nearest bookie to discover how well that law is enforced.

The establishment of an independent gambling regulatory authority is welcome and sorely needed. However, gardaí need to play their part in enforcing all of these new regulations because they have not been enforcing those in place.

Advertising for gambling is fired at us from every direction all day, every day. It is so commonplace that the rate of ads we see is not apparent until we start looking out for it. Those ads, whether they are the happy, cheery national lottery ads of people installing water slides in their flats or the barrage of Paddy Power ads running up to Cheltenham, all encourage addiction.

The impact gambling addiction has on people’s lives is immense: the emptying of someone’s entire bank account or that of their partner and family members, scales of debt that people have no hope of paying off within their lifetime, social isolation, deteriorating physical and mental health, and a suicide risk that is 15 times higher than the average. Gambling addiction, like all other forms of addiction, has been long neglected by our health system. The HSE does not have any specific gambling addiction services. In the UK, the NHS rolled out gambling treatment centres in 2019, and while it is early days, it seems to have been a success story that we should look to emulate. It would be a good target destination for funds collected under the social fund in the Bill. We also need to look at the possibility of debt write-offs for problem gamblers as part of a treatment plan for gambling addiction. These debts hang over people’s heads for years, and the stress and anxiety they cause only reduces the chance of recovery and increases the risk of suicide. I want to know if the Minister has looked into the feasibility of such a proposal.

We have little data on the rate of problem gambling in Ireland and no regular national survey on gambling behaviour, which is the norm in many other countries. The latest available data suggests that about 31,000 people in Ireland would be considered to have gambling problems. The introduction of an exclusion list for online gambling will be a lifeline for many people who are stuck in the cycle of addiction. However, I do not see the sense in this list being restricted to online gambling. Surely this list could easily be integrated into the software used by bookmakers to log bets?

An Irish Timesarticle from last summer reported that Irish gamblers lost approximately €1.36 billion in 2020, which is an average of €300 per person. We have the fourth highest rate of gambling in the EU and we are the 14th highest internationally in average gambling losses. Even more worrying are the statistics on gambling among teenagers. On every metric, 15- and 16-year-olds in Ireland gamble more than teens in the rest of Europe. Some 61% of 15- and 16-year-olds in Ireland had gambled on sports or animals, compared to the EU average of 45%, and 37% had used slot machines, compared to the EU average of 21%. A massive problem is brewing.Teenagers generally will have the disposable income available to them to have major impacts on their finances, and they are learning behaviours that will follow them into adulthood.

If we are serious about heading off that crisis, we need to seriously tackle advertising, sponsorship, and gambling in video games. The advances the Bill makes in cracking down on betting advertising are genuinely welcome. Having a 9 p.m. watershed for TV and radio ads, no gambling ads on children’s jerseys, no sponsorship for sports teams and venues that cater to children are all great initiatives. Why does the Bill stop there? It feels as if the Government is stopping right at the final hurdle in regulating advertising and sponsorship. There is no doubt a watershed is useful in keeping gambling ads away from children, but it is useless for any child old enough to stay up after 9 p.m. The children who are gambling are the ones we most need to protect.

Why should we allow TV and radio ads at all? For example, Belgium recently introduced a blanket ban on gambling ads. Has the Government considered this? If not, why is a similar ban not being considered? There is also the point that young people watch increasingly less live TV, meaning that the advertising we really need to be concerned with is that on social media. Social media advertising is much more dangerous in terms of problem gambling behaviour because those social media ads are cynically and purposefully targeted at people whom these companies know are hooked on gambling, or whom they think they can get hooked on gambling. This area needs to be heavily regulated domestically, and the proposed gambling regulatory authority needs to be active on this.

The wording of the ban on sponsorship and advertising in sports clubs, organisations, teams and premises that have children as members or cater towards children seems to work out as a near-blanket ban for most sports clubs and venues in the country. Will the Minister of State confirm that or outline how that section will play out in practice, considering most clubs have adult and young people’s team sports? I assume a small number of sports teams and grounds around the country cater exclusively to adults. Even Croke Park and the Aviva Stadium will have children playing matches during half time at senior games. Again, I have to wonder why the Government is choosing to stop there. Why not just have an outright ban on advertising and sponsorship for all sports and premises if it has basically the same effect?

The same logic applies to the ban on gambling ads on children’s jerseys. I reiterate that teenagers need to be particularly protected from developing the habit of gambling, and they are not protected at all under the Bill. Most older teenagers will be wearing adult jerseys with gambling ads before they are legally allowed to place a bet. Children who idolise sports stars have posters on their walls of their favourite players wearing a jersey with a gambling ad on it. Why allow them to advertise on jerseys at all? What about a young person on an underage team being asked to step up and play for the senior team? I hope this is not a lacuna that will have an effect on sports clubs themselves. Has a financial assessment been conducted of how sports clubs would fare without that sponsorship? Belgium recently introduced a law to phase out all gambling sponsorships for sports by 2024.

Gambling has been completely normalised for children and they link watching sport and gambling as being one and the same. There is quite a bit of research suggesting that if someone has a few early successes, they are much more likely to develop an addiction. We have to be careful about the exposure that children and young people have to gambling behaviour early on.

A comprehensive EU study in 2020 concluded that children and young people were learning gambling behaviour from games that sell loot boxes. A similar UK study found consistent associations between the features of buying loot boxes and problem gambling. This is covered in the Bill at all but the Minister of State might cover it in his reply. There seems to be some reluctance from Europe to regulate this area because it will not accept loot boxes as a form of gambling as the rewards are not tangible. The reality is that third party sites do exist where people trade and buy the prizes for money. It should not matter in any case. Regardless of whether a rare outfit or weapon in some game has a real world value, people put a value on it, and they spend money to purchase the loot boxes even if they cannot cash them out through the game itself.

The pattern of, in essence, placing a bet for the chance of receiving a reward, with no transparency in respect of the odds of success, is clearly the same pattern as gambling, but with far less regulation than standard betting. We cannot wait around for the gaming industry or Europe to regulate this for us. I ask the Government to seriously consider bringing this under the remit of the regulator.

See this speech in context