Public health and wellbeing will be the primary focus of the "extremely powerful" gambling regulator who will be appointed by the end of the year, according to Minister of State for Justice James Browne.
Eight years after a Bill to regulate gambling was introduced but never passed the Minister insisted he would introduce comprehensive legislation in September to reform regulation of the industry and said the regulator would be in place by the end of this year.
The regulator “will be extremely powerful” and will be backed up by comprehensive legislation.
“It’s really important to understand that it is not simply a regulator but they will have a public health remit as their primary focus in every decision and recommendation they will make,” said Mr Browne.
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But Labour Senator Mark Wall – who has repeatedly raised the issue – said "we cannot wait that long to ban gambling advertising". This is especially so because there is no watershed on the broadcasting of such advertisements and children as young as six are exposed to it.
Attention has increasingly focused on the explosion of gambling advertising after President Michael D Higgins twice last week highlighted the situation. He asked how such a high degree of saturation of the media landscape by sports betting had occurred "when the evidence of the damage being inflicted is so obvious and should be a concern to all".
Mr Wall said he is inundated with calls and emails from people “who simply want to be able to watch their favourite sport without having to wade through advertisement after advertisement encouraging them to gamble”.
The Kildare Senator said that Ireland is spending €9.8 billion gambling every year, “marking us out as the world’s seventh’s biggest spenders on gambling per head”.
But he said “what really disturbs me most is that there is no watershed on gambling advertising in this country. And our children and young adults are being exposed to a highly addictive behaviour. We have so many stories of children as young as six, especially when they were being homeschooled, asking their parents what these ads were all about.”
Mr Browne warned that it would be “challenging to find a way of effectively banning advertising where we’re having so much coming in from other countries”, when horse racing is on during the day and the premiership and other sports at the weekend.
But he said the UK is having a review coming out very soon as well and “that will certainly put the issue of sponsorship of sport on the table” after the surge in gambling company sponsorship of sports.
Gambling addiction
Labour is introducing its own gambling prohibition Bill and Mr Wall said they had to urgently regulate the industry because “of the large increases in those reporting gambling addiction problems”.
The party carried out an online survey and 80 per cent of respondents noticed an increase in gambling ads throughout their media, he said.
One of the most worrying results of the survey was that 65 per cent of those surveyed said they were more inclined to gambling after seeing these ads, “a figure that will please the gambling companies but will set off serious alarms bells for public health system”.
The Minister insisted that the regulator would be in place by the end of the year and the legislation will be introduced in September. Mr Browne said that when fully operational, the regulator will have some 100 employees.
Acknowledging the delays he said he had been “listening to proposals and promises around reforming gambling for 20 years and as far back as 2007 the employment of gambling regulator was an issue in the general election”.
The watchdog will have the power to develop regulations and codes of standard and to impose fines where regulations are not complied with.
