Debate contribution: Gambling-related Harms: Public Health Approach

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 28 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

28 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Gambling-related Harms: Public Health Approach

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4764129

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I will speak to the motion because I spoke on the order earlier on changing some of the stakes and payouts for certain types of gambling. Given that I remarked on the interaction between the order and motion, it is important that I speak in the debate. I want to be constructive, because the APG does very important work. Although I am not a member of the APG, I have paid some attention to the issue, and, as my colleague Mark Durkan said, our party is represented on the all-party group. Robbie Butler spoke very well about the work of the APG. Philip McGuigan, as always, shared his experience in a very heartfelt and insightful way. I, like other people, have taken the time to say that I am certainly not opposed to gambling. In the past, I have had, and still occasionally have, a flutter on the horses. I come from a town where horse racing is very important because it is one of two places in Northern Ireland with a racecourse. One of my first paid occupations — I probably should not say this: I will get someone into trouble — was working behind a bar, phoning through bets. That was 20-odd years ago, when most people did not have phones and did not have online betting. That was a thing that people did in country pubs in rural areas. Therefore, I do not take a puritanical or abolitionist approach to gambling. Enjoying a bit of sports betting is something that can be a bit of craic, and it can also support community, social and sporting endeavours and groups, GAA clubs and, by all means, I am sure, other community groups and all the rest of it. As Alan Chambers said, however, we have entered into a different technological age. We are talking about something entirely different from someone putting a fiver on a horse at the racecourse or in a bookies. Whatever people's theoretical, moral views about the rights or wrongs of gambling, it is fundamentally a different thing to have to find an open bookies, with a fiver, or whatever, in your pocket, go in and place the bet, write it down and understand all the details. It is totally different from having a phone on which you can gamble away your life's savings at any given moment. The reason that I draw that distinction is that we are here in the Assembly as legislators who have the power to legislate and change that. In 2021, when we debated the previous gambling legislation in the Assembly, I was here and made the point that I thought that it did not go anywhere near far enough. I thought it strange that we were talking about gambling harm but were, effectively, liberalising gambling, which is what we did earlier, when we passed the secondary legislation. At that time, the then Minister, Deirdre Hargey, said, and I quote from Hansard:

"I hope that Members will agree that, even if the Bill" —

which is now an Act —

"is eventually passed, there will remain a much larger job of work to be done, and that needs to take place in the next mandate." — [Official Report (Hansard), 27 September 2021, p13, col 1].

We have lost some of this mandate, but that was back in 2021, three and a half years ago. The Chair of the Communities Committee, Mr Gildernew, remarked that a new Bill would have to go into the next mandate, so that is from 2027 onwards. The previous Minister said, in 2021, that we needed new legislation to deal with all the gambling harm. It will be another decade, apparently before we get that legislation. This motion is very important. It is well intended, and I do not trivialise it at all. It is hugely important. However, we are legislators. As you told us today in a letter, Mr Speaker, we are legislators. We are not a school debating society and did not come in here to wring our hands and say, "Jeez, boys, isn't this bad? Isn't it awful? Something must be done." We are here to do something. That is why we have been sent here. We have the power to legislate and pass laws. We could do that. The Minister of Health is just one Minister. A lot of the stuff that we are talking about is not directly his responsibility. However, I ask whether he agrees that the Executive should go away and look at the draft Programme for Government (PFG), and see whether they can find the scope to put in at least the beginning of work to produce a comprehensive Bill on regulating gambling, including online harms. There will be challenges: a lot of that area is reserved. It will require resources. However, I would welcome it if the Health Minister could bring that back from today's debate and see whether it could be put in the final PFG. We all agreed, effectively, in 2021 that it was for the next mandate. Lo and behold, we have a PFG, and there is no mention of gambling. We are all here, on a cross-party motion, talking about how awful gambling harm is — and, my God, it is. Since we debated it in 2021, lives and homes will have been lost. Families will have been broken up. People will have been pushed into desperation and suicide. If we are serious about it, we will do more than simply agree this motion — well-meaning and thoughtful as it is — we will legislate. Let us get that from today's motion. Let us get a commitment to do all that we can to get something on the statute books by the end of the mandate.

962 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:55 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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