There are very few Members of this House who would not be acutely aware of the real and growing concern about online gambling. It is often an invisible social menace but it is a real and damaging one. We have been promised a gambling control Bill which has passed pre-legislative scrutiny but it is not on any of the priority lists.

Will the Government advance the Bill because this is one of the most pressing social issues that needs a legislative response from this House?

I agree with the Deputy and thank him for his question. The general scheme of the Bill was published in 2013. We carried out further research, published last February, which showed the need to update the scheme and that work continues. The Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill was before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality recently and the committee has returned it without any comment following pre-legislative scrutiny. We are doing some minor work on that to deal with gambling control. I was hoping to publish it this term but unfortunately it has not been possible to publish the general Bill. I hope we will do that next term. Meanwhile, we are considering setting up a regulator in shadow format to kick start the work that needs to be done in this area.

Could the Ombudsman legislation be used? I will talk to the Minister of State separately about that.