Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I congratulate the Labour Party, and specifically Senator Wall, on the proposed legislation. Senator Wall has a passion for this issue. He is sincere about it and has worked hard on it. He has done the House much service in doing that. Senator Wall has certainly done his party and the country some good in that respect. It is important and I say "well done" to him.

I salute genuinely the real commitment of the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, on this matter. The Minister of State is consistently committed to and consistently courageous on it. When I meet the Minister of State on the corridor, I am impressed that he identifies me as one of the people who have consistently spoken on this issue over the past couple of years and - without asking - he briefs me on where the legislation is at and what is happening. I appreciate that. It is a sign of the Minister of State's genuine passion for the subject. We are fortunate in that regard.

I personally support the legislation wholeheartedly. In my opinion, we should be banning all such advertising. I would support Senator Wall's view on that.

I will make a few general points. We all know people in our communities with a gambling addiction problem. Everybody knows them and public representatives know more of them than most. There are common features across such cases, including family breakdown, financial ruin, depression, job loss, psychiatric illness, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, bipolar, and often suicide or attempted suicide. This is a bleak picture but it is a real picture. We know these people in our communities. While these are stark examples, we know well that in every one of our communities there are a number of people who are less affected, but very seriously affected.

Obviously, there has been a big increase during Covid. Smartphones are a real issue now. That is why Senator Mullen mentioned bookie shops closing. They are closing because all of this activity has moved to the iPhones. We have highly addictive gambling products that are designed by mathematical geniuses to make them attractive and seductive. We have free bets, which should be eliminated too because they are wrong. They are there to entice people in. This is how young people develop their addiction. This has all obviously arisen during Covid.

It is interesting that Ireland has the third highest per capitaspend on gambling in the world. That is a stark statistic. As I have said, the products are addictive. We need a limit on spending. That is what should be done in the future. It should not be possible to gamble on ordinary credit cards; it should be possible on debit cards only. The token bets should be done away with. I believe the Minister of State has the courage for it and has been doing it. We should go at it fully because we will become as unpopular for doing it half-right as for fully right. We might as well go at it right.

On these products, Professor Colin O’Gara, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCD, says that 5% of people are affected. Professor O'Gara says that up to 250,000 people suffer financial and relationship difficulties, etc., because of gambling. As I have said, the general statistic - one cited by Senator Wall - is that approximately 40,000 people in the country are in the problem gambling zone. That is a very serious situation.

It is important to state, as my colleague Senator Carrigy did earlier, that my party will be supporting the legislation. My party will not be standing against such objectively correct legislation.

I support the idea of a fund from the industry. The industry should subvent the treatment. This money should not be provided to the industry's own charity but to an objective source. It would go to the State to assist with the gambling addiction. The HSE now needs to recognise gambling addiction as a problem and deal with it as a specific illness or condition.

We must take on the advertising in a big way. I refer to pop-up advertisements, etc. The number of advertisements during the recent European Championship soccer games was beyond reason and they were constant last week, as all the Senators said, through Cheltenham. We need to deal with this.

This is a real problem. Obviously, there are so many facets. The advertising is a big one and has to be taken on, and that is the substance of this Bill. There is no escaping that reality. We will find State support. We are finding State support for everything these days. Let us find State support for the sports that will lose money over it. That is one facet of it.

The second thing that we should be fit to do is to deal with spending limits and with the type of credit cards being used, etc. Parallel with that would be the support fund from the industry. I believe the health system should specifically address the difficulties of people who engage in problem gambling. We also need to develop educational products around this. There has to be education about gambling in the schools and right through.It is a very complex and broad question and none of us, certainly not the Minister of State or Senator Wall, are naive enough to think we would eliminate problem gambling through this Bill. However, it would save a lot of people, families and individuals and a lot of hardship and suffering could be avoided. We will not wipe out the problem. It would be naive to think that. We will not do that but we will alleviate pain, suffering and hardship, not only for the people with the gambling problems themselves but for the people with whom they come in contact, their families, communities and society. I will leave it at that. This is too important an issue to interrupt a proper response from the Minister of State.