Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 116:

In page 56, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following:

“Prohibition of advertising

67. (1) A person shall not advertise gambling, or cause gambling to be advertised.

(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) is guilty of an offence and is liable—

(a) on summary conviction, to a class A fine, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or both, or

(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €250,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or both.”.

The Minister of State will be aware that on behalf of the Labour Party I introduced a Bill in this House to ban gambling advertising 24-7. We have had a number of conversations last night and indeed today about the harms of gambling advertisement. Last night there was a lot of commentary on the normalisation of sport and gambling. The expertise employed by gambling companies is very relevant throughout all those advertisements. People watch TV or watch the advertisements and see those young people in the main coming home from a social night out and everything seems to be okay, they are gambling and everything as I said is okay, and they are heading home. The opposite is obviously the case for at least one in 30 people or 130,000 people in the country. Those advertisements deliberately target the most vulnerable in our society. As I said last night, during Covid-19 I received many calls from people who were trying to explain to their children, some as young as five and six, what gambling was and what the advertising actually meant. Indeed Senator Lombard commented last night that he had to explain the same to his own eight-year-old child.

I welcome the fact that the Minister of State has introduced a watershed through this Bill. I thank him for his commitment to this Bill because it will make a difference to many people. We need to follow the example of Belgium and the Netherlands and ban gambling advertising 24-7. We need to give those with an addiction a break. If we are going to stop at 9 p.m., that is prime time television for families and in particular for those who are sitting down after a hard day's work, their children are probably gone to bed and they want to enjoy television. Unfortunately, that is the time then when they are struck by one gambling advertisement after another. Our television advertising schedules, particularly from that time, are absolutely destroyed with gambling advertisements. We in the Labour Party feel, and we have spoken to many people about this, that we need to ban gambling advertising once and for all, to give those with the addiction a break and to ensure that we are not allowing those who may have an addiction in the future to be inspired, for want of a better word, by what the gambling companies have creatively projected in producing these advertisements.

We talked about lived experience earlier on in contributions and I have been told it is 9 p.m. when couples and indeed individuals are sitting down. They are struck then by gambling advertisements and it entices those who have an addiction, are going through addiction or coming out of an addiction, to gamble again. I am sure the Minister of State is aware of that. I know they have contacted him. They contacted me and other Members of this House. That is the time of night when they feel under most threat of relapsing into addiction. Yet, we are saying now that it is okay at 9 p.m. to advertise gambling. I ask the Minister of State to reconsider the 9 p.m. watershed. I welcome the fact that there is a watershed in the first place. Now we need to look at the benefit of banning gambling advertising 24-7 for the vulnerable people who need it most.