Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 19 seeks to address an imbalance that we perceive in the Bill, which essentially places the lion’s share of the responsibility to keep a person safe from harm with the person himself or herself. While it is, of course, important that a person takes responsibility for gambling behaviour, gambling companies should also take proactive steps to keep their users safe from harm. If gambling companies can be empowered under the Bill to keep under review the patterns of gambling deemed to be suspicious activity, they should also be empowered to review the patterns of participants to identify problematic, excessive or compulsive gambling patterns.

The amendment seeks to impose obligations on licensees to take proactive measures to safeguard participants from placing themselves at undue risk of harm. Where a problematic pattern like this is identified, the licensee would be obliged to take certain steps to safeguard a participant.