Irish Examiner view: Free bets escalate gambling problems
The ESRI says gambling offers pose real risk of financial harm, particularly to vulnerable groups.
Readers who are annoyed by gambling company advertisements that offer free bets to customers are on to something, to judge by a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
The ESRI says that people at risk of problem gambling are more susceptible to the inducements offered by gambling companies, such as free bets and money-back guarantees, and that those people experience significantly more harm from their exposure to them.
The ESRI’s Diarmaid Ó Ceallaigh said: “Our findings imply that gambling offers aren’t merely marketing tools, but pose a real risk of financial harm, particularly among vulnerable groups.”
Mr Ó Ceallaigh’s assessment of those gambling offers will resonate with many members of the public. The free bets and various guarantees are clearly aimed at drawing in customers and, as he says, can be seen as marketing tools. That does not stop them from being dangerous in and of themselves, however.
The ESRI’s research showed that offering such inducements caused participants in its study to spend 10% more and almost halved the number of people opting not to bet, a significant increase in both participants and betting amounts.
It is worth pointing out that the study was funded by the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI), which was established earlier this year to oversee the industry, and not before time.
Last March, its chief executive, Anne Marie Caulfield, told this newspaper that the extent of problem gambling in Ireland was “10 times higher than had been previously thought", so clearly action is needed.
Presumably, the gambling industry itself will work to solve this problem. Those advertisements mentioned above routinely carry warnings that people should “gamble responsibly”, after all.
If those warnings are to be taken seriously, then it means the industry should row in to support the GRAI in its efforts.
Last week, we were informed of the labour shortfall in the Irish economy, and the building sector specifically.
Alan Barrett of the ESRI said getting housing completions up to about
50,000 a year would require about 40,000 additional construction employees, though he added that “80,000 additional employees” might be needed to complete the National Development Plan, according to research by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council.
One of the challenges in recruiting so many workers was spelled out by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions this week when it called for apprentices to be paid the minimum wage. New pay rates for apprentices are due to come into effect at the end of July, but they start at €7.66 per hour. It is only in the third year of an apprenticeship that pay exceeds the current national minimum wage of €13.50 per hour.
It is difficult to believe that apprentices are expected to survive on €7.66 per hour, but that revelation makes it easy to understand why we have labour shortages.
It is not clear how we can be serious about encouraging people to take up the building trades when apprentices can expect to be paid half the minimum wage.
An Ictu spokesperson added that employers in the sector agree that apprentice pay rates should start with the minimum wage as a baseline, but those employers also claimed legislation is required because they would be at a competitive disadvantage if they applied those higher pay rates unilaterally. There may be some substance to the suggestion that paying higher rates would eat into profits.
There is less substance to claims to be in favour of the minimum wage if you need the law to force you to pay that rate.
It might be helpful to hear from some large-scale developers on this issue. Many of them are swift to articulate their concerns about various challenges, so it would be good to hear some of them back the Ictu call for apprentices to be paid the minimum wage — for everyone’s benefit.
The choice of such a relatively small facility was a surprise, he noted, because the matter at hand was of considerable public interest.
The court was supposed to hear new information gathered by Conor McGregor regarding Nikita Hand: readers will be aware that Ms Hand won her case against Mr McGregor last November, when she was awarded nearly €250,000 in damages after the High Court jury in a civil rape case found Mr McGregor had assaulted Ms Hand in December 2018.
However, no new information emerged. Just before the hearing was due to start, Mr McGregor’s lawyers told the Court of Appeal they would be withdrawing the new claims.
The court duly allowed the application to be withdrawn, but Ms Hand’s senior counsel later said his client was owed an apology, adding that the matter should be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Before the close of business that day, we learned that the Court of Appeal is to refer Mr McGregor’s withdrawal of his application to the DPP for criminal investigation.
Difficult though it is to believe, Mr McGregor recently aspired to become President of Ireland. The duties of the President include signing legislation into law and referring bills to the Supreme Court.
He is certainly becoming more and more familiar with the workings of the Irish court system.
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