WITH all the natural disasters in the world this week, not to mention the gardaí getting bodycams and the Fianna Fáil think-in being bombarded by tractors and angry farmers, it was easy to miss a fairly shocking report from the Institute of Public Health on children and gambling.
The findings in the report, Children and Gambling: Evidence to inform regulation and responses in Ireland, were described as ‘deeply troubling’ by a government minister.
Minister for State with responsibility for Law Reform and Youth Justice James Browne said society must move to protect children and vulnerable citizens from the harms associated with gambling.
You would have to be living under a very large rock not to have noticed how pervasive gambling has become in the last few years. There are often several ads for different gambling firms during each ad break on one particular but very popular UK network broadcasting into most homes on this island.
The firms are also sponsoring several television shows too.
The report revealed some pretty shocking statistics regarding 16-year-olds: more than one-in-five 16-year-olds in Ireland have gambled for money in the last 12 months.
Think about that for a moment – one fifth of all 16-year-olds are familiar with how to gamble.
It further revealed that, probably unsurprisingly, boys make up the overwhelming majority (80%) of 16-year-olds meeting the criteria for problem gambling.
This was the first study into the gambling activities of children aged 16 years in Ireland.
Almost a quarter (23.1%) of these teen gamblers were using online sites.
Betting on sports or animals was the most common form of gambling among this cohort.
Over 8.1% of these teens already felt the need to lie to people important to them about how much money they gambled and feeling the need to bet more and more money was experienced by almost one in five (19%).
Minister Browne said that reforming gambling legislation has been one of his priorities as minister.
The Minister gave a lot of detail about the Gambling Regulation Bill this week. He described the Bill as ‘a public health measure’ and said the key focus of the Bill is to protect children from the ‘widespread proliferation of gambling advertising across different forms of media’.
‘That is why the Bill provides for a watershed prohibiting the broadcast of gambling advertising on television, radio and on audio-visual media services between the hours of 5:30am and 9pm,’ he added.
‘The legislation also provides for the establishment and operation of the national gambling exclusion register and also introduces a number of additional measures to protect people who participate in gambling,’ he said.
Furthermore, there will be a ‘social impact fund’ established, which will be used to finance research and initiatives to address problem gambling, and to support treatment activities.
But then came the real shocker: the Minister said he ‘expected’ the Gambling Bill 2022 would complete its journey through the Oireachtas ‘early next year’.
There you have it – the report has shown us the grip this industry already has on our teenagers, with so many already addicted (‘problem gamblers’) and many more being exposed to the highly seductive advertising, by the hour.
Our Minister says this information is ‘deeply troubling’ and yet the soonest something can be done about it is ‘early next year’.
The report found that one in 10 of those who gambled in the last year demonstrated excessive gambling.
By early next year, hundreds more of our vulnerable teens are likely to have become problem gamblers.
Minister Browne added: ‘It is a priority for the government and my department to reform our gambling legislation, licensing and regulation.’
If ‘early next year’ is what ‘priority’ looks like, isn’t it just as well it’s not an important issue that needs urgent attention?
