I have no difficulty in supporting this motion. The legislation it seeks to have reviewed is legislation which simply has not worked over a very long period. There is a great deal of urgency about this review. I would hope that when this motion is passed here this evening — as I am sure it will be — the Minister will take this as an indication of the concern felt on all sides of the House; that he will set about a review leading to a constructive conclusion and will do so with the greatest possible speed.
As other speakers noted last week, and as some of the speeches reflected, there is a great deal of emotion on this subject. I have to say that much of the emotion surrounding it is well deserved. However, I must say also that some of it has been spurious, some of it has been politically motivated or motivated by the desire to seek headlines; frankly, some of it has been exploitative, has sought to exploit addiction, has sought to exploit circumstances rendered worse by this type of exploitation.
Having said that, I must say very emphatically that much of the bad publicity which has surrounded the gaming industry has been well deserved. It has been well deserved for a number of reasons, partly because over the years sections of the gaming industry have been greedy, unscrupulous, have sought to evade even the minimal restrictions which legislation sought to place on them. They have not come straight with the law, they have not been straight with the public and have shown a degree of social irresponsibility difficult to match in our society. In addition, the industry itself has shown little readiness, as a whole — there may well be sections of it which are responsible — to monitor its affairs, to take sanctions against those who transgress or indeed to attempt to bring these people to the notice of the authorities. The industry has taken a very long time to come up with its proposals for reform. The question has to be asked, had there not been so much of the publicity of recent years would proposals have been forthcoming at all? The industry lived in a very cosy position in which it was, to a large extent cut off from the rest of society. However, the industry has been disturbed out of its comfortable position in recent years.
There are many responsible people in the industry. There are many legitimate jobs in the industry but to any fair-minded person, looking in from outside, it is obvious it has taken the furore of recent times to galvanise the responsible section of the industry into action. Certainly it is not an industry which can take any great pride either in its role or its history over the past number of years, especially in its record of self-policing.
We now find ourselves in circumstances in which public opinion — in some cases exploited, in some cases manipulated — reflects a genuinely-felt conviction among very many people that something is wrong in this industry. We have now reached a stage at which choices have to be made and hard decisions taken. There is a strongly held view in the country that a blanket ban on all types of gaming machines is what is needed. This is a view in a case which is very easy to make, a case which will find many powerful supporters throughout the community. It will be fuelled and fed — as it was quite recently — by the well-publicised experiences of those who have been the victims of gaming. It will be supported by those who see it as an easy political issue on which they can capitalise. However it will be supported also by many people who genuinely believe that this is what is needed to tackle a problem that is all too obvious.
I would strongly oppose that line for a number of reasons. I would oppose it, first of all, because on a purely philosophical basis I believe the right to choose what one does with one's recreation, with one's disposable income, is a right which this House should not curtail to the extent of abolishing it completely. I would take the same view that drink is liable to abuse. That does not mean that we should seek to prohibit drink but we regulate it, we decide the hours in which drink can be taken, we determine the conditions, the sort of people who are fit to serve drink and those who are fit to get drink. It is the same with tobacco. Tobacco has very deleterious consequences. I remember being a fairly lonely voice in this House during the Tobacco Bill debate before Christmas when I argued very strongly against some of the sanctions on smoking which have now become law. Perhaps I was wrong but I felt this was too great an intrusion into the right to choose. It is the same on other issues. For example, on the right to divorce I have argued passionately that this is a right which people should have, they are not obliged to exercise it but at least it is a right which they should have, the right to choose. It is something which, as far as possible in a democratic society, should not be curtailed so long as it is not in conflict with the common good. I am afraid, that is the balance we must strike in all of this.
The second reason I consider that blanket sanctions, a blanket banning of gaming, would not be wise is that I believe it would be unenforceable. On different issues in the past we have seen prohibitions applied in every area of life. Where a total prohibition has been applied inevitably the end result has been that people through various imaginative means, have found ways around it. Inevitably they use their imagination to frustrate the intentions of the legislators. Much worse that that, total banks, total prohibitions, almost certainly drive underground the activities we are describing. They would drive them totally into the arms of criminals, putting them totally under the control of criminals with the result that the far from satisfactory position obtaining would become infinitely worse. For that reason a total prohibition on gaming would lead to a worse situation when whatever element of control there is at present — whatever element of control there should be which is far greater than obtains at present — would become an impossibility.
Before saying what I would like to see done I should like to deal with the point made by Senator McGowan, that is, the role of local authorities in this issue. As a member of a local authority I am not at all persuaded that local authorities are the best groups to judge such cases. Very often local authorities are subject to a variety of pressures to which an independent board is not subjected. It can be legitimately said, that members of a local authority frequently will have a better on-the-ground awareness of the consequences of particular circumstances. I would hope that in a case of regulation this awareness, this local knowledge and local concern, would be capable of being transmitted to those who will take the decisions.
My experience has not persuaded me that the atmosphere surrounding these decisions is the calm, objective atmosphere which one would like to see such decisions taken. I am not convinced that the pressures often brought to bear on councillors in such cases lead to the best decisions. Indeed, I was struck on my local council by the irony of one group arguing very strongly for the banning of gaming machines in clubs while another part of the same organisation was profiting from the existence of such clubs in a different part of the country. There can be a degree of hypocrisy and playing to the gallery in all of this.
I support the motion this evening. I very much want to see an immediate, thorough review of the workings of the 1956 Act. I would like to see an inquiry, not necessarily a public sworn inquiry, but an inquiry into the operations of that Act and into the effects of the current position on the general public here. I would like to see it done by trained people away from the emotion and publicity which has surrounded the issue up to now. I believe there is a great deal to be said for a thorough reform, for new rules, which can be enforced. One of the great Irish problems in so many areas is that while we are extremely good at making rules and regulations, we are very bad at enforcing them. We can see it in virtually every area of Irish life where the laws are there, whether it be dog licences, with regard to emission of noxious fumes for motor vehicles, safety standards in cars, whatever the subject frequently legislation does exist but what is absent is the means or the will to enforce it.
Whatever we do this evening, we must send a message to the Minister that whatever changes are brought about must have the full sanction of enforceability behind them. Otherwise we might as well go for the worst option of all which is the total ban on gaming activities.
There is a great deal of merit in the proposal of one section of industry for the establishment of a gaming board which would have full control over the industry. It must be a gaming board with very real powers, a gaming board which has a definite length of time within which to sort out the problem. It must have the sanction of a total ban hanging over it. I would like to see such a gaming board having general powers of supervision in relation to all aspects of gaming and lotteries, including newspaper lotteries. I would like to see it having the right to issue licences in respect of all premises and persons engaged in the manufacture — which is a major problem — the distribution and the operation of all gaming and amusement machines. I would like to see the conditions applicable to all of these determined by such a board. It must have the power to revoke such licences and to determine the procedure for revocation and penalties.
It must have the power to determine the suitability of those who engage in gaming, of those who run gaming arcades or machines. This is a major problem because there is no doubt whatsoever that many of the people who are engaged in the gaming industry at present have a whiff of criminality about them. This makes it extremely difficult for those who want to run a responsible industry to get their point across. The gaming board, as I would envisage it, would have very strict powers to determine the suitability of those who can engage in these activities. It would issue enforceable guidelines on age limits, on the amounts to be paid out, on the margins of profit and so forth in all aspects of gaming.
I envisage this gaming board having its own inspectorate, paid for by the gaming industry, but nonetheless an independent inspectorate of sufficient numbers and quality to ensure that everything in the house was being kept in order. I would envisage such a board being directly accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas and the Minister for Justice, that it would not be just another independent quango out there. It would be a board which would have to furnish an annual report to the Houses of the Oireachtas, which would be answerable to the Minister for Justice and which would have at its head a person of sufficient credibility and stature to ensure that its activities would be generally accepted by the general public.
I believe we are at a crossroads as far as the whole question of gaming is concerned. The reason I support this motion tonight is that I believe there is a duty on Government — and it is a duty where I believe the Minister is anxious to give the lead at this time — to ensure that there will be a hard, detailed, searching examination of the industry and current legislation. Having done that, the Government must then come back to us and tell us whether in their considered view they would favour a total ban, as many people advocate, or whether they believe the industry can be policed, put in order, can be made acceptable, the abuses ruled out, having established that only those who are fit and proper to do so be allowed to operate in the industry.
My view, as I have made very clear, would fall very heavily in the latter category. I should like to see this motion going through this evening. I would like to have an earnest from the Minister of his sense of urgency, of the wide-ranging review he would like to see take place, perhaps also of the type of machinery he would like to see in place so that this problem can be faced up to once and for all, so that those who are not fit to be in the industry are driven out of it, and kept out of it, and those who want to run it honestly are given the opportunity to do so within firm and definite legislation.