Sarah Harte: The Government has bottled it on gambling — our young people will pay
Technology has allowed people to gamble discreetly 24/7.
Technology has supercharged the gambling problem. You no longer have to enter a seedy bookie's. You can gamble 24/7 and discreetly do so on your dopamine-delivering phone, with no visible signs.
Maybe you’re of the mindset that thinks human vices should be legal, but there is an issue around targeting minors who are not fully capable of making decisions. As the Tabor Addiction Group said: “Young people are particularly vulnerable, with gambling addiction affecting them at two to three times the rate of adults.” They are also subjected to the rapid expansion of increasingly sophisticated gambling opportunities.
Last Friday, legendary hurler Davy Fitzgerald’s son Colm Fitzgerald received a 12-month suspended sentence for stealing money from his former employer, the Bank of Ireland, to feed his serious gambling habit. Colm Fitzgerald “expressed relief” when his theft was discovered.
He did all he could to cooperate with An Garda Síochána, repaid the money with the help of his family, and has sought treatment, speaking of suffering shame and remorse. At 28, he’s just starting out. Addiction is a disease and not a choice. The very best of luck to him in building a new life.
I mention his painful experience only because how he started to gamble is not uncommon. For many young people, recreational sports betting will have been a gateway to problem gambling. Squads of young men I know in their 20 now engage in sports gambling. Most of them start gambling in their teens and played sports themselves.
It’s not spoken about much, but it's there, humming along in the background of young lives, with, I suspect, many parents relatively clueless as to the extent of it. To this cohort of middle-class young men, gambling has become entirely normalised.
Stuck in a cycle of online betting as they age, it will become apparent whether their gambling is mild, moderate or severe, with potentially negative repercussions on their finances, wellbeing and relationships. For some, they will chase their losses and dig themselves into a deeper hole until the problem becomes too big to hide.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) estimates one in 30 Irish adults has a gambling problem. This figure is likely to be conservative. A report released this year indicates we have one of the highest rates of gamblers per capita in the world.
Evidence shows children are twice as likely to become problem gamblers later in life if they start betting before the age of 18, which, as chief executive of the new Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland Anne Marie Caulfield, says, justifies “clamping down very hard”.
So, how hard has the Government clamped down on gambling? Housing minister James Browne, then minister of state with responsibility for the legislation, said he experienced “endless” lobbying from the gambling industry, hardly a surprise given it is worth somewhere between €6bn and €8bn. Intensive lobbying came from the Irish Bookmakers’ Association, which represents betting shops and online operators like Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, and Boylesports.
While it’s a positive to have a dedicated authority to streamline the regulation and licensing of gambling, which has been piecemeal until now, this legislation has been in the pipeline for 11 years, since a Fine Gael-Labour government first proposed new gambling laws. It certainly hasn’t been rushed through.
As of March, the new Gambling Regulation Act 2024 came into effect, establishing this new gambling watchdog. However, most of the provisions of the act, although signed into law, have not yet commenced. Consequently, it’s business as usual for most gambling companies in Ireland, which are not currently required to follow the new laws.
It is hoped that these new rules, which prohibit online gambling advertisements on certain social media services unless the person has an account with the platform concerned, will have an effect. This is designed in part to protect underage people who have been targeted with advertisements on social media.
However, two glaring holes remain in the act, which suggest the gambling industry successfully forced the government to capitulate.
First, the proposed watershed restriction on gambling advertisements between 5.30am and 9pm does not go far enough. How many teenagers and young people do you know who go to bed by 9pm? Part of the normalisation of gambling is advertisements are widespread. A blanket ban on ads should be considered, as was introduced with tobacco products.
Secondly, there is no outright ban on free bets, as was initially envisaged in an early version of the bill. Free bets are a popular promotional tool, offering bettors a ‘free bet’ to encourage them to sign up to a site or service, or to reward existing gamblers for their repeated use of an online sportsbook, thereby encouraging continued use.
Mr Browne said he could not accept a complete ban on free betting inducements and bonuses. This watering down of the legislation was a missed opportunity. As I was researching this article, an ad immediately popped up offering me exclusive offers for 50 free spins from a casino. Other ads followed this, all offering me "bonuses".
As Senator Lynn Ruane pointed out in the Seanad when her amendment to the then bill failed: “These types of inducements are an entry point into gambling for young people."
The gambling industry’s pushback was that any business needs to seek out and attract new customers proactively. But why shouldn’t we approach betting companies in the way we dealt with the tobacco industry?
This is what Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who introduced the highly successful workplace smoking ban as minister for health, proposed back in 2022 when he spoke about taking the same approach to gambling, including “across the full gamut of advertising regulation”.
A national self-exclusion register will prohibit gambling operators from accepting bets from gamblers who have self-excluded from online services, yet this places the onus on the individual gambler to stop rather than on the operator.
Such is the scale of the problem that banks, such as AIB, Bank of Ireland, EBS, and Revolut, are offering voluntary self-exclusion tools that block access to online casinos, slot machines, and lottery websites. Once again, the responsibility lies with the individual to act.
When Bank of Ireland introduced its voluntary block last month, figures revealed men placed 71% of bets in the first quarter of 2025. Ninety per cent of gambling transactions took place online, and there was a 19% increase in gambling among 18- to 25-year-olds in the same quarter.
When you have an industry as lucrative as the gambling industry, which generates significant revenue and employment, compromises will inevitably be made. But while the new legislation is being heralded as introducing a new era for the regulation of Irish gambling, it does not reflect the principles the government originally set out.
Ultimately, the government bottled it, allowing gambling companies to influence our public health policy and thousands of people, many of them too young to understand what they are getting into, will pay a high price.
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