Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has indicated the intention of the amendments but it is still important to speak to them. I will speak to amendments Nos. 151 and 152. This section of the Bill deals with the information which must be provided when making an application for a gambling licence.

Amendment No. 151 inserts a new provision which would stipulate that a prospective licensee would be obliged to submit information regarding measures to be taken to safeguard participants in gambling, including through the reduction of risks and harms posed to those participants. We feel there is an imbalance in the Bill in respect of safeguarding, with the burden being on participants to keep themselves safe from harm. Of course, people bear personal responsibility for the decisions they make but the industry concerned with this legislation has a motive which is regularly in direct conflict with the needs of many of its participants. It can be incredibly difficult for people with a compulsion or addiction to stop engaging in problematic behaviour because they feel compelled to engage in it. We must do more to help people who need a proactive way, as opposed to waiting for a person to take exclusive responsibility to self-identify as a problem gambler or gambling addict, or to self-exclude.

We have all been subject to a barrage of gambling advertising in recent years and while we are not all susceptible to this messaging, many people are and there is a significant uptick in the number of people affected by problem gambling or gambling addiction. According to the ESRI, in 2023 one in 30 people in Ireland had a gambling addiction, ten times higher than the equivalent statistic in 2019, while one in ten people is classified as a problem gambler. This significant uptick is likely due to the increased prevalence of gambling in contemporary life and the ease of access to gambling services through online and remote means. While the regulator will obviously have an important role to play in trying to reduce the number of people affected by excessive and compulsive gambling and gambling addiction through its programming, it cannot achieve this on its own. Gambling companies, which ultimately bear responsibility for the development of excessive and compulsive gambling habits, must also take responsibility. We cannot expect they will do this out of goodwill and we must mandate that they provide safeguarding statements that set out how they intend to keep their participants safe from gambling harm.

As someone who has worked in addiction for a long time, I primarily worked with substance addiction but regularly worked with people with gambling addiction. I have been working in addiction since 2007. There was not always somewhere people could identity to go to for support, so they would sometimes end up in community projects seeking support with gambling. For many years, we have heard people talk about drug dealers when somebody is trying to stay sober or is not using a substance, and there is the demonisation of people around them: "Why did you give them that?" or "Why did you offer them that?" We do not extend that same expectation to a massive industry. Why would we not shame that industry if it is purposely preying on people's addiction? It is able to collect data in a way that picks up gambling behaviour.

If someone in our household was struggling with any addiction, we would not wait for them to self-identity; we would expect services to give interventions. We should apply the same logic to gambling, reducing harm and improving the gambling industry in terms of it taking a more proactive response. As someone who worked in addiction, it was always difficult when someone came in with gambling addiction because it was harder to support someone with that addiction. It was not always only men; there were older women with addictions to scratch cards.They would spend all their money on payday, or their social welfare over a day or two, on scratch cards, and leave themselves with little or nothing for the week. We would often try to have conversations with shop owners to make sure that is not the case and tell them that the person would be left without food.

As well as personal responsibility, we need to make sure that the gambling industry is being much more proactive. When working in the homeless sector and hostels, in Back Lane Hostel around 2010, I remember two men in particular. One owned a restaurant. He lost it a number of times through gambling. He won it back and lost it again. This was a man who did not have any other social issues going on in his life but kept ending up back in homelessness because of his gambling addiction. When we look at compulsive behaviours such as that, we need to treat them in the same way we would a substance or anything else. We need to accept that the individual will not always be in the position to self-identify in time before it is too late - before they lose absolutely everything.

Addiction is extremely evasive and hard to manage, and gambling is no different. If we look at somebody who is on drugs, people have a reaction to somebody who is very physically and visibly in addition. However, a gambling addiction will never look physical or be visible, so we turn a blind eye somewhat to how much it destroys an individual’s life and the impact it can have on an individual. With a substance, you go to sleep at some stage. There is only so much substance you can take. As someone who provides supports for people with addiction, it is always easier to provide supports for substance use because of the physical nature and the physical impact on the body. You can gamble all night and all day repeatedly, and never fall asleep. You will not fall over drunk and wake up ten hours later. You will be physically able to continue to engage in one of the hardest addictions to overcome because of the nature of it.

Therefore, I do not accept that, in this case, we have to wait for somebody to self-identify. We should put into the legislation that the licensee, especially when they understand gambling behaviour, can identify. We should put those harm reduction measures into the regulation.

Amendment No. 152 also seeks to insert a new provision regarding information to be included in an application for a gambling licence which, if accepted, would require a prospective licensee to provide information regarding the personal data to be gathered from participants and how it is intended to be processed and used. This amendment is particularly relevant for remote service providers who are most likely to collect personal data so they can personalise betting services for their participants. While there are certain obligations on online service providers including gambling companies in the GDPR and the Digital Services Act, it is important that, before receiving a licence to operate in the Irish market, gambling companies provide the regulator with information about their data protection and privacy processes given the often insidious and predatory behaviour of gambling companies in the personalisation and individualisation of their services through extensive data profiling.

I know I keep going back to drugs, but it is hard not to because addiction is addiction. We keep going on about grooming Bills and stuff in this Chamber in respect of drugs in communities. The gambling industry, in many ways, is grooming people, but we do not have the same uproar about it. We are not putting in place regulations that are as strict as I think they should be with regard to making sure they do not have the opportunity to do that. Data is one way they are doing that with how they build profiles on people.

Investigative reporting in The New York Timesin 2021 highlighted the disturbing extent of the manipulation of participants’ personal data with the sole aim of keeping them engaged in gambling activity. The reporting demonstrated that betting companies regularly compile what is, in effect, a dossier of information about their participants, either directly or through a third-party data service. The dossiers contained detailed banking records, mortgage details, location co-ordinates and an intimate portrait of a participant’s habits and behaviours that can be processed to provide bespoke, individual recommendations to participants using artificial intelligence and recommender systems. A particularly disturbing revelation in the reporting was that data-profiling software label participants who leave as customers to “win back”. For example, one participant received emails to win more than $40,000 by playing slots after automated software flagged that he was likely open to them. A predictive model even estimated how much this individual would be worth to the company if he started gambling again - about $1,500.

While the GDPR and the Digital Services Act have a critical role to play in regulating the behaviour of online service providers with respect to data protection and data privacy including gambling companies, the new gambling regulator should also have to play a proactive role with regard to the expectations it places on prospective licensees.