Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 97:

In page 46, after line 37, to insert the following:

“(i) communicating the risks and potential harms caused by gambling, including to children and young people,”.

Chapter 4 of Part 2 of the Bill deals with the creation of a social impact fund, another extremely welcome provision in this legislation, which will see certain portions of revenues of licence holders investing in individuals and communities negatively impacted by gambling. Amendment No. 97 proposes that the social impact fund would be utilised to provide public education and awareness-raising measures that would focus on communicating the risks and potential harms caused by gambling, including to children and young people. The amendment is informed by the principle of early intervention which in this case is to prevent the onset of excessive and compulsive gambling in the first instance before it becomes a problem for people.

The existing provisions of this section are too heavily focused on addressing excessive and compulsive gambling without acknowledging how participants arrive at this point and the full extent of the harms caused. Gambling is a risky behaviour. While people regularly take risks in their lives it is important that they are informed of the associated risks and harms before they engage in the behaviour in the first place. It is not sufficient for the regulator to fund public awareness to communicate that too much gambling has social consequences. Instead, we propose that they would, in addition to the other public awareness initiatives, provide information to the public about the risks and potential harms of all types of gambling - excessive, compulsive or otherwise – including a specific mandate to communicate this to children and young people.

As we have outlined on a number of occasions throughout the debate, the link of being exposed to gambling at a young age and developing a problem gambling habit is really significant and we need to do everything in our power to prevent these links from materialising. Amendment No. 98 separately seeks to expand on an existing provision in the section relating to the provision of services to excessive and compulsive gamblers and other affected persons. This is a welcome provision but we would like to see it expanded slightly to include reference to the support services that could be offered to affected communities. Data released by the Health Research Board in 2022 demonstrated that problem gambling bears a strong relationship to living in a deprived area and being unemployed. According to the report, the profile of at-risk or problem gamblers tends to be men aged 25 to 35 living in a deprived area who are unemployed and experience difficulties with substance misuse or abuse. This will not be surprising to hear in the context of this debate, with many of our colleagues in the House referring last evening to the prevalence of casinos, amusement arcades and bookkeepers in working-class communities versus wealthy ones. In the UK, research from the University of Liverpool and the National Centre for Social Research, published in 2021, demonstrated that not only are people from deprived areas more regularly exposed to gambling and more likely to develop problem gambling habits, they are also more likely to place risky long-odds bets. This means deprived communities are more likely to be most acutely affected by the harms associated with problem gambling.

With this data in mind, it seems worthwhile that we would invest some of the social impact fund into deprived communities to try to prevent problem gambling in the first place and to alleviate some of the harms posed at a community level, in addition to the harms to individuals. That would be achieved by this amendment.