Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I said here on a number of occasions that in good times and bad, even in a town which is struggling economically, you can always expect to see a thriving betting shop on the main street. I observed something late last year that caused me to modify that view. On a busy street in a provincial town that I sometimes pass through, I spotted that where there had been two betting shops which were once thriving for many years, they seemed to have closed at some point over the past 18 months. Apparently one of them, an independent betting shop, closed before Covid-19. The other, which was part of one of the smaller betting chains, closed last summer. The second shop was right next door to a very busy pub which even had a dedicated screen with odds and race times. There was clearly a large crossover trade and yet that betting shop had closed.

None of us would ever celebrate the closure of a business or the loss of jobs, but perhaps in this situation a part of you might be inclined to cheer quietly about the closing of a betting shop, at least until you thought about the fallout for ordinary people. It is not likely, however, that such closures are a result of a reduction in gambling. The footfall in these shops was simply reduced by the increase in online gambling driven by relentless and all-pervasive advertising. That gambling advertising hit stratospheric levels during the first lockdown two years ago and has grown steadily from there.

I had occasion to listen to the radio for an extended period of hours last week and noticed that every single ad break on Newstalk over that period included a Paddy Power ad for the Cheltenham Festival featuring the actor, Colm Meaney, who I am informed has never set foot on a racecourse. That is beside the point but that is the story. That type of situation brings saturation advertising to a whole new level. Indeed, I wonder if there is a law of diminishing returns for gambling companies out of this. Certainly, I noticed in one place where I was having lunch they had the racing on and the owner was hitting mute every time that particular ad came on the television. It seems that even racing fans were sick of hearing it.

This issue has long passed the point where the Oireachtas ought to intervene sternly. I support Senator Wall's Bill and commend him on bringing it forward. As I have said before, it is limited, perhaps even flawed in some respects, and it does not go nearly far enough in other respects. The Bill includes a carve-out protecting the sponsorship of sporting events and once-off charitable events by betting concerns. I find this difficult to agree with. Tobacco advertising is banned across the board as a result of developments at an EU level. If we were to turn back the clock, would we allow tobacco sponsorship of events or charitable events? I very much doubt it. The Bill proposes a blanket ban on all broadcast and non-broadcast advertising except for printed material distributed at a racecourse or a dog track. While I support this general aim, I think the approach is too blunt. For example, as it stands, the Bill appears to ban gambling advertising both inside and outside betting shops. As much as we dislike gambling, it is a lawful enterprise, so it does not make sense to impose that particular ban.

The Bill would also ban publications such as the Racing Postfrom carrying gambling ads. Again, I think that much is excessive. However, on the other side of the coin there are a range of practices the Bill does not address. For example, gambling advertising regularly offers inducements such as free bets, refunds, discounts and so on to attract and entrap new customers. These should be banned.

We also need to address the advertising of the national lottery. I have spoken about this before. It has become all-pervasive. Virtually every ad break on RTÉ now has an ad for the lotto. This needs to be regulated and restricted because the lotto is a form of gambling. Many addicts have spoken of their addiction to it.

I do not think I am the only person who has noticed a subtle change in tone in lotto advertising in recent years. Until recently, it used to be about winners buying themselves yachts, private jets, solid gold houses and the like, but in the past two years lotto advertisements have focused more on winners spending money on their neighbours and the wider community. We have all seen ad nauseamthe ad featuring the guy who buys a water slide for his block of flats and the recent one about a woman who has installed hidden swimming pools and water slides in her rural village. They are amusing in their own way, but you would want to be living under a rock not to have seen them at least once a day for the past year or so.

The important thing here is the reason for this change of emphasis, which is that the lottery does its own market research and it has shown that ordinary Irish people do not like the idea of people winning huge amounts of money just for their own selfish selves, so to speak. As a result, there has been this subtle change of advertising strategy to suggest that playing the lotto is not actually a selfish enterprise. It is almost an altruistic thing, that if you win, think of all the happiness you could lavish or endow upon others. Somehow winning the lotto will allow you to benefit the community that you live in. Of course this is, in the vast majority of cases, just rubbish. What is seen here is a manipulation of people's good instincts but in the service of selling a product. No matter how much good the national lottery does and no matter what way you look at it, that is predatory advertising and should be dramatically curtailed to at least the watershed. The lotto is supposedly restricted to those over the age of 16, so why is advertising for it not confined to after the watershed, as things stand?

Those are just some thoughts. I want to acknowledge the value in what Senator Wall is doing and my comments are meant to be constructive. It is clearly difficult to get things to happen in this area. We have allowed too much time to elapse. The Government seems to speak out of both sides of its mouth on this issue.I wish this legislation well. No doubt there will be another day for bringing forward the other measures.