Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendments Nos. 80, 81, 93, 94, 109 and 110 all seek to require that online safety codes and media service codes, respectively, would prohibit or restrict advertisements for gambling and cryptocurrency. On Committee Stage, I combined the two issues of gambling and the promotion of speculative financial activities such as cryptocurrency. I believe they are very strongly linked. In recognition of the strong support across the House to have much stronger constraints on advertising and given that the debate on cryptocurrency is one that is evolving, I have put them as separate amendments.

I know the Minister for Justice may introduce provisions in this regard. We need action on gambling and it should not be left to the Minister for Justice. I believe the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media can lead on this because massive profits are being made in the online gambling area. It is also one where we are seeing some of the more dubious practices, which prey on, encourage and nurture gambling addiction. We need to address that at an early stage. Simply looking to the Department of Justice is too narrow. I sit on the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach and it is an issue that has been raised there. These areas are ones where the online space is incredibly important. That is why I have pushed the idea of media service codes and online safety codes in these amendments.

Senator Wall and others in this House have outlined at great length the damage that gambling can do. Previously in the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill we made specific provisions relating to alcohol and addiction. A framework dealing with the issue of addiction and exploitation would also be relevant for gambling.

Advertisements for cryptocurrency are all-pervasive online. We have talked in this House about loot boxes that train children from a young age in gambling practices. The extremely aggressive advertising of stock trading and cryptocurrency across all kinds of social media platforms is a real concern. This is not an issue that is floating out there. It is an issue which in particular exploits times when people are under financial pressure. People lose their entire livelihoods. They gamble away on cryptocurrencies and very quickly they can lose extraordinary amounts of money.

People may have seen articles as recently as in the last couple of weeks. I do not like the use of terms such as "crypto queen" or other glamorised language.One of the first and largest cryptocurrency pyramid schemes, OneCoin, is estimated to have caused up to €4 billion worth of financial loss in that scheme. Extraordinarily, millions of individuals have lost out as a result of that scheme. One of the first people responsible for OneCoin, having aggressively marketed this Ponzi scheme, having told everybody it was the next Bitcoin, having pulling people into it and having caused them to lose their livelihoods, was last seen in Dublin before disappearing off the grid with a large amount of money taken from the scheme. Ireland needs to think very carefully about the issue of cryptocurrency, given that we are a major data centre and given that we have seen the damage done by excessive data mining environmentally. We have also seen the political instability caused in Kyrgyzstan by aggressive cryptocurrency mining. This is not a small or a minor issue. It is one of the main kinds of advertisement that I personally see online. The issue needs to be addressed. We do not need to wait for the Departments of Finance or Justice to address it and the Minister could take the lead on the issue. I believe that gambling and cryptocurrency are health issues and massive issues of public interest. I hope that we can strengthen the Bill in the autumn in the Dáil in respect of both of those issues.