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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just worried, you know. The pace of everything with this has been too slow,\u201d says psychiatrist Colin O\u2019Gara, who is head of addiction services at St John of God Hospital.<\/p>\n
He had watched in frustration as regulation fell off the political radar for years, while the \u201cgamblification\u201d of society continued apace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a generation that are now in their teens and early 20s who are fully \u2018gamblified\u2019,\u201d O\u2019Gara says, referencing how this age group sees online gambling as entirely normal.<\/p>\n
[\u00a0Q&A: How the new gambling regulator will affect Irish punters<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n He cites an Economic and Social Research Institute<\/a> (ESRI) study that in 2023 found that problem gambling affected one in 30 adults or 130,000 people. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople said I was exaggerating. I wasn\u2019t, because I had my finger on the pulse of this,\u201d O\u2019Gara says. \u201cAnd the thing is that\u2019s only the very severely affected.\u201d<\/p>\n The ESRI study estimated that a further 7.1 per cent, or 279,000 adults, showed \u201cmoderate evidence\u201d of problem gambling, and a wider group still, 15 per cent of adults or 590,000 people, reported \u201cat least one negative experience or behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n In his clinics, O\u2019Gara sees people who are ill. Their neural circuits are dysregulated. They often have issues with frustration tolerance, distress tolerance, emotional regulation and impulse control.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Even among less severe cases, problem gambling is associated with relationship difficulties and disordered moods. \u201cThe person will feel fantastic, then it\u2019s crash, bang, wallop,\u201d O\u2019Gara says.<\/p>\n The full impact remains hidden, however, because people find it hard to come forward for treatment.<\/p>\n My head was completely fried<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Chris Joyce (31), who has been in recovery from gambling and alcohol addiction for six-and-a-half years, says: \u201cWith gambling addiction, it\u2019s so secretive. You can do it in the bathroom on your lunch break, and that\u2019s what I would have done.\u201d<\/p>\n Gambling is \u201cthe unspoken one\u201d, 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 \u201creally got out of control\u201d soon after, then he also \u201cslipped\u201d in the gambling.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t brought his dog with him then he wouldn\u2019t have returned home.<\/p>\n The crisis prompted Joyce, then 24, to reach out to Ois\u00edn McConville, the former Armagh GAA footballer and current Wicklow manager who had gone public with his gambling addiction a decade earlier. He will be \u201cforever grateful\u201d to McConville for getting him into a residential treatment programme at the Rutland Centre, Dublin, in late 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cMy head was completely fried. I remember being in the Rutland Centre on Christmas Eve and thinking I could walk home to Galway for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n Joyce, who made a speech last September at the Knocklyon-based centre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Emma Kavanagh, head of clinical services at the Rutland Centre, says: \u201cSports 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.<\/p>\n \u201cGambling is seen as benign because it\u2019s not something we ingest into our bodies. I think it\u2019s very normalised, too, through the power of advertising, and because it\u2019s legal.\u201d<\/p>\n In March the treatment centre launched the State\u2019s first fully funded outpatient programme specifically for gambling and gaming addiction.<\/p>\n The 10-week rolling programme includes group therapy, one-to-one counselling, seminars on topics such as relapse prevention, support for families and \u201crobust\u201d aftercare. \u201cIt\u2019s really important that care doesn\u2019t fall off a cliff,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n When people move from recreational to problem gambling, it\u2019s often because their activity has initially satisfied some otherwise unmet need in their lives \u2013 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.<\/p>\n For McConville, who ran up heavy debts before he stopped gambling in 2005, there was a competitive aspect.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought the way out of my addiction was through my addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 (GamblingCare.ie) last year. <\/p>\n He\u2019s conscious that much gambling now takes place online, so habits are becoming ingrained at ever younger ages.<\/p>\n \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Teachers increasingly want him to talk to third-year or transition-year pupils, rather than 17 to 18-year-olds.<\/p>\n The ages of people seeking help is \u201cskewing lower all the time\u201d, says addiction counsellor Barry Grant, who founded the charity Problem Gambling Ireland, now Extern Problem Gambling, in 2016.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey think \u2018I could emigrate, or I could stay here, but I\u2019m not going to get my own place here, so is there any point in me saving this money at all?\u2018. There can be a bit of that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Despite an Institute of Public Health study finding in 2023 that one in four 16-year-olds had gambled, the State has \u201cnever\u201d done a public health campaign on gambling, Grant says.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s rate of 3.6 per cent.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 a boon to an industry that secures \u20ac6 billion to \u20ac8 billion in annual revenues in the Irish market.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope to go up to 35 [staff] in the coming months,\u201d GRAI chief executive Anne Marie Caulfield says. \u201cWe anticipate that when we\u2019re at full tilt, when we\u2019re fully operational, we will need 120 staff.\u201d<\/p>\n GRAI, which will operate a new licensing regime for gambling operators, intends to accept applications from December under a phased process. \u201cAll going well\u201d, it will grant its first licences in July 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the restrictions and consumer protections will apply at that stage,\u201d Caulfield says.<\/p>\n The legislation that set up GRAI notably did not include an outright ban on inducements such as \u201cfree bets\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n But O\u2019Gara says: \u201cThere\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Extern director of services Deirdre O\u2019Driscoll, who would also like to see inducements fully prohibited, said: \u201cVery few teenagers are going to bed at 9 o\u2019clock [when the daily curbs on advertising are lifted].<\/p>\n \u201cI do think that we have a duty of care for future generations. We need to stop making it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n McConville, too, believes inducements \u201creally and truly need to be totally and utterly done away with\u201d. The current wording creates \u201cthat little grey area\u201d that leaves the landscape less safe than it could be.<\/p>\n Still, he takes the \u201csomething is better than nothing\u201d approach to the legislation, and it\u2019s a feeling shared by others, with O\u2019Gara calling it a \u201cstarting point\u201d and O\u2019Driscoll hailing the advent of GRAI as \u201cvery important\u201d. There\u2019s optimism that new rules on online advertising will have a material effect.<\/p>\n At GRAI, Caulfield says it will publish a code of practice on inducements to bet. The subject is a sensitive one. <\/p>\n \u201cIn the past inducements were sent to people demonstrating the signs of problem gambling, and we need to make sure that practice doesn\u2019t repeat itself here in the Irish market,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n By giving the seven-member authority responsibility to address \u201cexcessive or compulsive gambling\u201d, the legislation is future-proofed, she says.<\/p>\n GRAI\u2019s in-tray includes issuing advice to parents, working with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment<\/a> on gambling education for junior-cycle and transition-year students, and researching the use of potentially stigmatising language. <\/p>\n Addiction experts dislike the line \u201cplease gamble responsibly\u201d, for instance, arguing that it subtly shifts the blame for problem gambling to individuals, away from product design or lax regulation.<\/p>\n One of the most rewarding things is seeing people who are at rock bottom getting to full recovery<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Psychiatrist Colin O\u2019Gara, an expert in addiction services<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Caulfield would like to \u201cgenerate more discussion\u201d on the issue, especially if the language used is deterring people from asking for help.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> and Revolut<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cBehavioural addictions like gambling addiction were just financially left out in the cold up until this legislation, so that\u2019s going to be huge,\u201d Grant says.<\/p>\n\n
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/NVYMF4RDHNE7RDZU6DRPUA6J7M.jpg\")
Chris Joyce, from Galway, celebrates five years of recovery from gambling and alcohol addiction last September. Photograph: Marc O’Sullivan <\/p>\n![\"Emma](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/SFWNTA5X6FDR5MOMPQUZF7LEGA.JPG\")
Emma Kavanagh, who is head of clinical services at Rutland Centre, Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n![\"Oisín](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/XB7XQHHBJ5EOBESESTXIHMNHT4.jpg\")
Ois\u00edn 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 D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n![\"Barry](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/FESYDLSB4JFCB55WPSAEGR7WTM.jpg\")
Barry Grant, of Extern Problem Gambling, says the State has never carried out a gambling warning campaign. Photograph: Patrick Browne <\/p>\n![\"Anne](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2WQN5LN6C5AADIIYB2HQ4DEICU.jpg\")
Anne Marie Caulfield, chief executive of the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. Photograph: Conor McCabe Photography <\/p>\n\n