Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response and colleagues who spoke in favour of the motion. I want to put into context what we are talking about. The criminal who imported young girls into this country on the pretence that they were coming as waitresses beat the living daylights out of them in the midlands, put them into prostitution in Dublin, and laundered his money through betting shops in Dublin. That is gambling. The man who stopped me outside the gate in 2014 to tell me that he recognised me as the new Senator and wanted me to bring in amendments to the betting Bill politely informed me that he was going home to tell his wife that he had lost €87,000 gambling. That man haunts me to this day. I do not know if he ever arrived home and, if he did, I have no idea what impact that news had on his family. Two elderly parents came to see me. Their son had run up debts to the tune of €15,000. One evening, there was a knock on the door and two brutish men gave them a very cold option of paying the €15,000 or visiting their son in hospital. That is gambling and that is what is going on in this country. We are all aware of gambling machines, online gambling and so on. None of us can explain the addiction. A person cannot understand it unless he or she is sucked into it.

It would be simple to get the online companies to shut a person out of a site automatically after one hour, and to prevent people from going online to gamble between 12 midnight and 7 a.m. These technological solutions could be put in place. I accept that we need a regulatory body for this but we have to think about these matters. Kids in the rugby schools in various parts of the country are betting and companies are taking bets on school rugby, GAA and soccer matches. That is gambling. If one is living with an alcoholic, that person will fall in through the door, fall asleep and do whatever alcoholics do. A drug addict will go through the horrors.If one is living with a gambler, one can be sleeping beside him or her when he or she takes out the smartphone from under the pillow and bets on some ridiculous football match in some godforsaken part of the world that he or she cannot identify on a map. He or she bets on the next goal, the likelihood of the next free or a penalty. That is what we are talking about in gambling. The Minister of State is correct; it is an extremely broad subject. I have discussed it many times with the Minister of State and I am convinced of his determination to move it along. I do not think, in the time that remains to this Government, that we will see the completion of any legislation but I believe the Minister of State will move along the sections he can and for that I thank him.

I will not call for a vote as I think we have cross-party support for this motion. I thank my colleagues for their comments and commitment to regulate gambling.