Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are into the realm of unintended consequences here, as other speakers have pointed out. In my own GAA club in Waterford we held a fundraiser last year. Tickets were €100 and the prize was a house in Dungarvan. The draw raised €600,000 and that money is going exclusively into underage sports development. I can guarantee that the people who were buying the €100 tickets for a house were not really gambling. They knew what they were doing; they were giving money to their club and if they were lucky, they might get something. They were not doing it because they wanted to gamble. The Bill has strayed here and this needs to be looked at again. So many organisations and individual GAA clubs use lotto-type arrangements and people buy tickets for good reasons. That is not the kind of gambling we are trying to address.

I would also point to something that is not in the legislation, which is a gambling block. I brought this up with the former Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, eight or ten weeks ago. Under a measure that was agreed in this House in principle over two years ago, the banks would introduce a gambling block on credit and debit cards for problem gamblers and those recovering from gambling addiction. The idea was that cards would be blocked from accessing any gambling site, but it has not moved forward at all. That is a significant issue. It should be in this legislation. We have waited long enough for it and it is something that is being done very successfully in the UK. It can be done easily here too. The banks have agreed to do it and yet it has not progressed. I urge the Minister of State to look again at the issues of fundraising by community, philanthropic and social groups and the introduction of a credit and debit card gambling block for problem gamblers in this legislation.

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