Philip McGuigan MLA Calls For Gambling Regulations To Be Enforced

The Communities Minister, Gordon Lyons MLA, today, 28 January 2025, brought forward a motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly to approve changes to gambling regulations that will significantly increase the maximum stake and prizes limits for licenced operators of gaming machines in Northern Ireland.

These new regulations are a tacit acknowledgment by the Department that members of the NI Turf Guardian Association, which represents bookmakers, are operating outside our gambling laws. This is backed up by evidence in an Investigation Report by FACT, commissioned on behalf of law firm, Lewis Silkin. Dated 1 August 2024, the report reveals that licenced bookmaker premises in Newry, Ballymena and Belfast are operating up to 4 electronic gaming machines offering maximum stakes of £2 and prizes of £500.

Speaking after the Stormont motion on the Gaming (Variation of Monetary Limits) Order (Northern Ireland) 2025 was approved by Assembly members, North Antrim MLA Philip McGuigan said: “There is evidence of the widespread unlawful operation of Electronic Gaming Machines, including Fixed Odd Betting Terminals (FOBTS), in the north. These regulations are an attempt to align gaming machine stake and prize limits with those in Britain. This is a classic example of quietly closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. For more than two decades, bookmakers across the north have been operating Electronic Gaming Machines illegally here. This includes offering stakes and prizes and numbers of gaming machines that exceed what is allowed under the 1985 Order.

“It is crucial that these gambling regulations are enforced. We need to know who is going to minimise the risks by safeguarding people and ensuring that bookmakers are not continuing to break the law, as they have done over recent years.”

Recent research from the University of Glasgow has shown there is a strong association between the total consumption of gambling products and levels of harm within the population. The evidence suggests that continuous forms of gambling with high degrees of concentration of consumption create the greatest risk of gambling harm.

And research from Bournemouth University commissioned by GambleAware that analysed the harms associated with different gambling products found that gaming machines were the most harmful group of products, with three quarters (76%) of people that only used gaming machines were experiencing problem gambling.

This is supported by evidence from the most recent Gambling Survey for GB, which found that people who play casino games on a machine or terminal were 5 and a half times more likely to experience problem gambling than the average gambler.