Mattie McGrath demands teeth for new gambling regulator

The Gambling Regulation Bill, if enacted, will create significant changes in how gambling is regulated, in particular if it will be about the following changes, and they are badly needed to establish a Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland to ensure that the gambling is conducted in a fair and transparent manner. But when I see these regulators, and I see the Regulatory Authority, I start to have question marks, because in so many areas, breastplates on the walls, fancy offices, and they do very little regulation. That's what I fear. It's what happens. It's kind of like a flu now, the way they're expanding and growing up, mushrooming rather. To amend the safeguards to counter the problem of gambling, ensure the protection of the children, and to establish powers, which are most importantly, to regulate gambling advertising, which is huge. To provide the authority with enforcement powers, in addition to licensing activities, the authority will also be given wide-ranging powers of enforcement, and I thought I was going to make a shame, but will it happen? These include the powers to apply to the court for an order to prevent or block access to remote or other services, sorry, online services, and the power to carry out tests and all this and problem gambling services in an undisclosed manner. And that's what we need, people that have the powers to arrive and check and speak. One of the most significant powers will be the power to impose, administer financial sanctions, and the money is staggering that they're talking about sanctions of up to €20 million, but I see where it can be taken of 10% of your turnover in the High Court. The bill also passed free letters of scrutiny, which is good, on the grounds that the grim reality in Ireland is that problem gambling is growing every year, growing and growing and growing. And the situation that is growing with young people, Nadine Oga is more than two a shin. And these jokes, I mean, they have them so young, and we all know of cases, many cases, of preferably responsible people in responsible jobs and businesses and managers of post office in different places who have felt victim and felt foul of this and ended up in misery for themselves, their family, their workplace, and indeed the company they work for. So it has to be tackled, we're slow coming to the tackling actually, and I want to say that, you know, the advertising, it's bamboozling all the advertising that comes around by the big companies. I'm here to represent the small, one man or two men, or man and wife, or man and his son, local and small independent bookmakers, who go out every day to end and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and on his days pay, and they know their clients. and they know if there's something wrong with it and they can confide with their clients and say, look, maybe you're unfortunate there or whatever, maybe you need to have a look at yourself. So those people, and they're in every town and village, certainly, I know many men in Tipperary that do the Carmel track and do the racecourses and they're all over the county Tipperary and are foot and tier freshen. So, I mean, unfortunately, the available data points to problem gambling growing here every year. According to the counselling group Extern, the number of new visitors to the websites, problem gambling has increased tenfold in the past six years and the political system has to be ahead of this. We're way behind catching up here, so we have to. As I said, this can follow people not only at home but into their bedroom, into their office, out in the back garden, wherever they have, whether they go to a bar or a restaurant for a meal or whatever. So we have to be able to deal with it. But we have to have a toothless, not a toothless organisation, but an organisation that has the power and has the staff that will work outside ours and will break down the barriers and borders and do this. And they have to have the support of the Gardenshire corner and indeed the community at large. And we can't allow big gambling houses to circumvent this legislation. And we can't have, as I said at the start, we can't have the regulator with the brass plate on the wall and a fine big office and little staff to monitor. And we need staff that have expertise in this area. We need a Garda, I suppose, and we can say that for every division, that they have to have a unit for this, than the other. But they need to be taxed and they need to have resources and they need to be a rigorous implementation of this regulation if it is passed. And I hope it will be passed. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. It has gone through pre-led scrutiny. And I want to see, I haven't seen what I read of it, with all legislation, an impact analysis and an assessment within the first 12 to 15 months of how this is bedding in and it's having the desired effect and protecting our young people especially. Thank you very much.