Latest news with #GamblingRegulatoryAuthorityofIreland
Irish Examiner
27-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Gambling is a ticking time bomb and we can't ignore it any longer
After years of burying our heads in the sand on what a massive problem gambling is in this country, the last few years have seen a step change in our understanding of the issue. This is in no small part down to the country's first gambling regulator. Even though it was only formally established earlier this year, it spent the years prior in the background, commissioning the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) to delve into the extent of the problem. Its reports make for sobering reading. And shows just how much Ireland has to do to catch up on what experts have described as a 'public health emergency'. Even just take the headline findings: 'One in 30 adults in Ireland suffers from problem gambling — 10 times higher than previously thought.' Take your class at school, and at least one of them has a gambling problem. A more recent study reported 'strong links between childhood experiences of gambling and problem gambling in adulthood.' Britain got its regulator nearly 20 years ago tasked with holding to account what was then a growing industry, where the traditional betting shop was beginning to be superseded by gambling apps on our phones — essentially a casino in all of our pockets. In 2025, it's a multi-billion euro industry embedded into every facet of sport around the world. For a very long time now, watching a football game has meant being bombarded with gambling adverts during the game itself and in the ad breaks. You can 'build' your own bets now for what you think will happen in a football game. Sitting around watching a game in a pub with friends, and you'll inevitably hear someone who says he needs one player to have two shots, another player to commit two fouls and another to get a yellow card. The fiver he put on it might get him a few hundred euro. And this is normal now. It's how so many people engage with the sports they grew up loving. Through betting. Anne Marie Caulfield is the CEO of the newly established Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. Picture: GRAI Of course, for many people, it's a relatively harmless hobby. They're up and they're down, and they may have a good time riding those waves. But what we have seen as the regulator tasked with holding these companies to account finally gets its powers, is how much harm it's doing too. And how wary we need to be about the impact the availability and promotion of gambling is having on younger generations. Last week, the latest European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs was published. It surveyed 114,000 students aged 15-16 across 37 European countries including Ireland last year. While it found the use of cannabis, cigarettes, and alcohol is falling among Irish teens, gambling is on the rise: 29.1% of Irish people in that age group had gambled in the last year. This was an increase from 24% in 2019. To be clear, it's illegal for children to gamble. But they are doing so anyway. And we have those studies now that link exposure to gambling in childhood to problem gambling later in life. There's even a link between gaming and gambling, according to recent research. The ESRI said there was a strong correlation between online gaming in older teenagers and online gambling and gambling frequency by the age of 20. The researchers said there is increasing concern among parents, researchers, and policy makers about the availability of gambling in modern life. They also noted there has been a greater gamblification of gaming through the introduction of loot boxes, skins, and social casino games in recent years which did not exist two decades ago. 'Given the rapidly evolving nature of online gaming and gambling, ongoing monitoring of these behaviours in younger and older cohorts is crucial,' the researchers said. Issuing its reaction to the European statistics, the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland made clear that protecting children is firmly within its remit and is something it takes very seriously. 'One of the principle aims of the Gambling Regulation Act is to protect young people from the harms of gambling,' it said. Child protection is one of the key principles of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, and will therefore be a major focus of our work. The act has not yet been fully commenced, but when it is Ireland will have the heaviest penalties in the EU for allowing children to engage in gambling. When that act is fully commenced, an entity allowing a child to gamble could face an eight-year jail term. It will also be an offence for gambling companies to target children with branded clothes and merchandise. An advertising watershed will also come in, similar to what's in place now for alcohol, where gambling adverts will be banned on TV and radio between the hours of 5.30am and 9pm. And, unlike the alcohol industry which has skillfully evaded advertising curbs by pushing their 0.0 products, it does appear there is little leeway for the gambling companies to perform similar feats to still push their products on TV during the day. And the penalties for breaching the laws could be significant. Financial sanctions can reach up to €20m or 10% of a company's turnover, whichever is higher. In the UK, some of the big betting firms are routinely fined millions of pounds for breaching the law. It remains to be seen if we will see the same here. On a recent trip to the US for work, it was astonishing to see how much the betting industry has gotten its claws into young men, in particular, as online gambling has surged in popularity there. With top celebrities on their gambling ads pushing these products, it did beg the question of whether America will regret allowing online gambling to proliferate so much there unimpeded. It's a ticking public health time bomb. And one this country can't ignore. Ireland has gotten plenty of new quangos in recent years tasked with holding sectors making billions of euro to account. Coimisiún na Meán is tasked with regulating the big social media firms based here, and at a recent press conference one of its top officials diplomatically said there'd been 'pushback' by some of these companies to being regulated, similar to the experience of the Data Protection Commission, which operates in a similar sphere. Both of those regulators can dish out massive fines, as can the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. What its own research and the recent European figures show is that finally getting to grips with problem gambling in Ireland could not be more urgent.
Irish Examiner
21-05-2025
- Irish Examiner
Ireland to impose 'heaviest penalties' in Europe on companies that allow children to gamble
Ireland will soon have the 'heaviest penalties' in Europe for companies that allow children to gamble, the industry regulator has said. The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland made the statement in response to a new European-wide survey that showed a significant increase in young people in Ireland who have gambled in the last year. The data also showed that rates of gambling among young people here are well above the European average. 'One of the principle aims of the Gambling Regulation Act is to protect young people from the harms of gambling,' the regulator told the Irish Examiner. 'Child protection is one of the key principles of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 and will therefore be a major focus of our work.' European survey The EU's Drug Agency on Tuesday published the eighth edition of its European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs. It surveyed 114,000 students aged 15-16 across 37 European countries including Ireland last year. While it found that the use of cannabis, cigarettes and alcohol is falling among Irish teens, gambling is on the rise. In Ireland, it found that 29.1% of young people in that age group had gambled in the last year. This was an increase from 24% in 2019. This rose to almost a third (31%) of males while it dropped to 27% for females. Almost one in five males aged 15-16 (19.4%) said they'd gambled online in the last 12 months while 13.6% of females said they had. There were significantly higher numbers reporting gambling in-person, at 27.9% of males and 24.9% of females. In advance of being granted its powers, the Gambling Regulatory Authority had commissioned the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) to conduct research on gambling in Ireland, including among young people. A recent study found that online gaming in adolescence and young adulthood 'strongly correlated' with both online gaming and gambling frequency at age 20. When the Gambling Regulation Act is fully commenced, the country's gambling regulator will have sweeping powers to crack down on gambling operators and dish out significant fines for breaching the law. Under the law, financial sanctions can reach up to €20m or 10% of a company's turnover, whichever is higher. A firm allowing a child to gamble will furthermore carry a potential penalty of eight years' imprisonment. Licencees and owners of gambling websites will not be allowed to sponsor an event aimed at children, an organisation, club or team in which children are members and an event in which the majority of those attending or competing are children. Separately, an advertising watershed will apply and any advertising that targets children and portrays gambling as attractive will be illegal. The regulator added: '[We] acknowledge the findings of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs for 2024 and take note of the findings. '[We are] committed to fulfilling our mandate as an independent regulatory body, and we will continue to keep public health at the centre of everything we do. This commitment is reflected in our mission to effectively regulate and educate in order to safeguard current and future generations from gambling harm.'
Irish Times
03-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
Gambling in Ireland: ‘We've a generation in their teens, early 20s, who are fully gamblified'
It's the 'bookie in your pocket' or the 'casino in your hand' – the opportunity to gamble that follows us everywhere our mobile devices do from bed to desk to toilet, never closing its doors. The unfettered growth in popularity of online gambling over the past decade has brought with it a deepening concern that problem gambling has become a largely invisible health crisis, marked by secrecy and stigma. The State is now at an turning point on gambling. Last autumn the first comprehensive Irish legislation since 1956 passed into law after 17 years of stop-start government debate and much industry lobbying. Last month the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI), the sector's first dedicated watchdog, was established. New consumer protections will come into effect next year. READ MORE With gambling harms now estimated to affect a much wider group than previously thought and with under-18s reporting betting habits that alarm experts, there are fears that the prevalence of problem gambling could still worsen. 'I'm just worried, you know. The pace of everything with this has been too slow,' says psychiatrist Colin O'Gara, who is head of addiction services at St John of God Hospital. He had watched in frustration as regulation fell off the political radar for years, while the 'gamblification' of society continued apace. 'We have a generation that are now in their teens and early 20s who are fully 'gamblified',' O'Gara says, referencing how this age group sees online gambling as entirely normal. [ Q&A: How the new gambling regulator will affect Irish punters ] He cites an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) study that in 2023 found that problem gambling affected one in 30 adults or 130,000 people. This 3.3 per cent rate, based on a survey conducted anonymously online, was 10 times higher than the rate reported by a 2019 study that used face-to-face interviews. Perhaps most worryingly, the ESRI said it thought the figure might still be an underestimate. 'People said I was exaggerating. I wasn't, because I had my finger on the pulse of this,' O'Gara says. 'And the thing is that's only the very severely affected.' The ESRI study estimated that a further 7.1 per cent, or 279,000 adults, showed 'moderate evidence' of problem gambling, and a wider group still, 15 per cent of adults or 590,000 people, reported 'at least one negative experience or behaviour'. In his clinics, O'Gara sees people who are ill. Their neural circuits are dysregulated. They often have issues with frustration tolerance, distress tolerance, emotional regulation and impulse control. Once people in the grip of a gambling addiction start chasing their losses, it can accelerate to the point that they are betting 24/7. When funds run out then indebtedness, theft, suicide ideation and suicidal behaviour can follow. Even among less severe cases, problem gambling is associated with relationship difficulties and disordered moods. 'The person will feel fantastic, then it's crash, bang, wallop,' O'Gara says. The full impact remains hidden, however, because people find it hard to come forward for treatment. My head was completely fried Chris Joyce (31), who has been in recovery from gambling and alcohol addiction for six-and-a-half years, says: 'With gambling addiction, it's so secretive. You can do it in the bathroom on your lunch break, and that's what I would have done.' Gambling is 'the unspoken one', he says. His addictions spiralled when he began earning his own money from a supermarket job in Galway, aged 19. In 2016 he sought help from Gamblers Anonymous, but his drinking 'really got out of control' soon after, then he also 'slipped' in the gambling. When his mother found a letter with details of a bank loan, he denied he was borrowing money to fund his betting. That night he went for a walk and he said believed that if he hadn't brought his dog with him then he wouldn't have returned home. Chris Joyce, from Galway, celebrates five years of recovery from gambling and alcohol addiction last September. Photograph: Marc O'Sullivan The crisis prompted Joyce, then 24, to reach out to Oisín McConville, the former Armagh GAA footballer and current Wicklow manager who had gone public with his gambling addiction a decade earlier. He will be 'forever grateful' to McConville for getting him into a residential treatment programme at the Rutland Centre, Dublin, in late 2018. 'My head was completely fried. I remember being in the Rutland Centre on Christmas Eve and thinking I could walk home to Galway for Christmas.' Joyce, who made a speech last September at the Knocklyon-based centre's annual medallion ceremony for people marking recovery milestones, recently became a father and now wants to share his story with as many young people as he can. Emma Kavanagh, head of clinical services at the Rutland Centre, says: 'Sports betting tends to be an entry point for people, but what we see is that as their gambling progresses, people will take a bet on anything. People will gamble on the most mundane-seeming things. 'Gambling is seen as benign because it's not something we ingest into our bodies. I think it's very normalised, too, through the power of advertising, and because it's legal.' In March the treatment centre launched the State's first fully funded outpatient programme specifically for gambling and gaming addiction. Emma Kavanagh, who is head of clinical services at Rutland Centre, Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw The 10-week rolling programme includes group therapy, one-to-one counselling, seminars on topics such as relapse prevention, support for families and 'robust' aftercare. 'It's really important that care doesn't fall off a cliff,' she says. When people move from recreational to problem gambling, it's often because their activity has initially satisfied some otherwise unmet need in their lives – they might see betting as a balm, distraction or escape. Part of the recovery process, Kavanagh says, is about exploring what that unmet need might be. For McConville, who ran up heavy debts before he stopped gambling in 2005, there was a competitive aspect. 'I felt really comfortable on the football pitch, and I felt I could add value, and I would feel the same way walking into a bookies. Then the competitive thing kicked in. I felt the bookie was getting the better of me, so I had to go back in,' he says. 'I thought the way out of my addiction was through my addiction.' Oisín McConville, the former Armagh GAA footballer and current Wicklow manager, who went public about his own gambling addiction and now helps others. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Since he went public in 2007, McConville has used his GAA profile to help others. He started working with the industry-funded Gambling Awareness Trust ( last year. He's conscious that much gambling now takes place online, so habits are becoming ingrained at ever younger ages. 'If I go into schools and talk to 16 to 18-year-olds and I ask them how many of them have been in a bookies before, maybe 10 per cent will put their hands up. But if I ask how many have had a bet before, maybe 60-70 per cent will say they have.' Teachers increasingly want him to talk to third-year or transition-year pupils, rather than 17 to 18-year-olds. The ages of people seeking help is 'skewing lower all the time', says addiction counsellor Barry Grant, who founded the charity Problem Gambling Ireland, now Extern Problem Gambling, in 2016. Barry Grant, of Extern Problem Gambling, says the State has never carried out a gambling warning campaign. Photograph: Patrick Browne Back then, the people he helped were predominantly men in their 30s and 40s, their gambling often brought to light by a mortgage application. Today, with mortgages out of reach for so many, and rents often prohibitively high, younger people living at home sometimes feel they might as well gamble. 'They think 'I could emigrate, or I could stay here, but I'm not going to get my own place here, so is there any point in me saving this money at all?'. There can be a bit of that,' he says. Despite an Institute of Public Health study finding in 2023 that one in four 16-year-olds had gambled, the State has 'never' done a public health campaign on gambling, Grant says. Problem gambling now extends well beyond the traditional image of the bookie regular in another way: more women are suffering from it. In an echo of UK data, the ESRI found that 2.9 per cent of women engage in problem gambling, not far behind the men's rate of 3.6 per cent. Extern Problem Gambling, part of social justice charity Extern, has responded to this by launching the EmpowerHER Recovery Network, a free and confidential service offering support to women affected by their own gambling. Opportunities and inducements to gamble are now so embedded in our online environment that another ESRI study reported last year that the link between problem gambling and having a parent who gambled has weakened among the under-40s. What was once a crucial factor for determining whether a child will go on to develop problem gambling may have been superseded by the always-on internet – a boon to an industry that secures €6 billion to €8 billion in annual revenues in the Irish market. This stark backdrop is guiding the priorities of the new regulator. It has been a busy spring for GRAI. Its 20 employees have just moved out of the Department of Justice to its own office space on Mount Street Lower, Dublin. 'We hope to go up to 35 [staff] in the coming months,' GRAI chief executive Anne Marie Caulfield says. 'We anticipate that when we're at full tilt, when we're fully operational, we will need 120 staff.' Anne Marie Caulfield, chief executive of the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. Photograph: Conor McCabe Photography GRAI, which will operate a new licensing regime for gambling operators, intends to accept applications from December under a phased process. 'All going well', it will grant its first licences in July 2026. 'So the restrictions and consumer protections will apply at that stage,' Caulfield says. The legislation that set up GRAI notably did not include an outright ban on inducements such as 'free bets', instead only prohibiting offers targeted at particular individuals or groups. Its advertising watershed, which will banish gambling ads from television and radio between 5.30am to 9pm, also fell short of the blanket ban that some advocates had sought. But O'Gara says: 'There's absolutely no sense in having any advertising out there. I guess over the years we were just beaten down. It was really hard to get anything in.' Extern director of services Deirdre O'Driscoll, who would also like to see inducements fully prohibited, said: 'Very few teenagers are going to bed at 9 o'clock [when the daily curbs on advertising are lifted]. 'I do think that we have a duty of care for future generations. We need to stop making it easy.' McConville, too, believes inducements 'really and truly need to be totally and utterly done away with'. The current wording creates 'that little grey area' that leaves the landscape less safe than it could be. Still, he takes the 'something is better than nothing' approach to the legislation, and it's a feeling shared by others, with O'Gara calling it a 'starting point' and O'Driscoll hailing the advent of GRAI as 'very important'. There's optimism that new rules on online advertising will have a material effect. At GRAI, Caulfield says it will publish a code of practice on inducements to bet. The subject is a sensitive one. 'In the past inducements were sent to people demonstrating the signs of problem gambling, and we need to make sure that practice doesn't repeat itself here in the Irish market,' she says. By giving the seven-member authority responsibility to address 'excessive or compulsive gambling', the legislation is future-proofed, she says. GRAI's in-tray includes issuing advice to parents, working with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment on gambling education for junior-cycle and transition-year students, and researching the use of potentially stigmatising language. Addiction experts dislike the line 'please gamble responsibly', for instance, arguing that it subtly shifts the blame for problem gambling to individuals, away from product design or lax regulation. One of the most rewarding things is seeing people who are at rock bottom getting to full recovery — Psychiatrist Colin O'Gara, an expert in addiction services Caulfield would like to 'generate more discussion' on the issue, especially if the language used is deterring people from asking for help. GRAI is also working with consultancy Deloitte on establishing a national gambling exclusion register, which will strengthen the piecemeal system of voluntary self-exclusion tools offered by the bigger operators as well as blocking services available from banks such as AIB and Revolut . But it's the promised arrival of a social impact fund, paid for via a levy on company revenues, that people who provide addiction treatment and recovery services welcome most. 'Behavioural addictions like gambling addiction were just financially left out in the cold up until this legislation, so that's going to be huge,' Grant says. GRAI, through state agency Pobal , is seeking views on how the money should be spent. 'We've done research into what sort of fund will be generated by different percentages of turnover and we will make that available to the Minister [for Justice],' Caulfield says. 'As soon as the licences begin, we will start to collect that levy. Ultimately it is a matter for the Minister to decide on how much, but [it is likely to be] 1-2 per cent, somewhere in that range.' Caulfield says GRAI is 'at a really positive stage now' as it prepares to take a leading role in the protection of children and people experiencing gambling harms. For his part, O'Gara is keen to emphasise that medical understanding of addiction is improving all the time. 'I've sat in this office for about 20 years and I can assure you that one of the most rewarding things about it is seeing people who are at rock bottom getting to full recovery,' he says. Helplines 1800 936 725 Gamblers Anonymous: HSE Addiction Services: Addiction Counsellors of Ireland: Family Addiction Support Network:
