Ireland’s GRAI calls for industry input on Social Impact Fund

The Social Impact Fund was established under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, passed by Ireland’s parliament in October.

That act established the GRAI, which is tasked with developing Ireland’s gambling regulatory framework. The GRAI is also responsible for developing the Social Impact Fund, which will be supported by a mandatory levy, to support research and services for those impacted by gambling harms.

Revenues from the fund will come from industry stakeholders and be used to finance research projects, community interventions and educational programmes that aim to tackle compulsive or excessive gambling. Some treatment programmes will also receive monetary assistance from the financial reserve.

Although the regulator will oversee the fund’s formation, the department of justice will also have a degree of oversight, with the power to direct how the fund is divided.

GRAI publishes four questionnaires to support Social Impact Fund development

To start the process of developing the Social Impact Fund, the GRAI has created four questionnaires to gather feedback and better understand the impact of gambling addiction in Ireland.

Within its questionnaires GRAI is looking to hear from people who have lived experience of gambling addiction. It is also seeking input from addiction service providers and non-governmental organisations that work with vulnerable groups.

The final questionnaire is looking for input from “affected others”, meaning friends and family members of those that have been impacted by a loved one’s problem gambling.

An NGO called Pobal is tasked with assisting GRAI in administering and managing the fund. According to Pobal’s site the entity “supports communities and local agencies in their work to achieve social inclusion and support community development”. It developed the questionnaires on behalf of the GRAI.

The call for input from impacted organisations and individuals opened on 14 April and will close 15 May.

GRAI told iGB last month that it would also form a number of consultant panels to help shape the market’s regulatory framework. One such panel will consider views and feedback from those with lived experiences of gambling harms.

GRAI has called the development and rollout of the social impact fund a “key priority”.

How will the social impact fund be financed?

During parliament’s final debates over the new Gambling Act in October, politicians raised concerns over how the GRAI would be funded.

The bill’s sponsor, deputy James Browne, stated that the GRAI would be “funded by the industry by way of levies” because “the impact on the taxpayer once it is up and running should be zero”.

The GRAI has also been tasked with establishing the levy that will support the Social Impact Fund, although the department of justice will decide how much licensees must pay to support the fund. This will be a set percentage of a licensee’s turnover.

Speaking to iGB in March, GRAI CEO Anne-Marie Caulfield said that “the Social Impact Fund [will be supported by] a levy on all of the licensed [gambling] companies.

“Ultimately, ministers will decide what percentage is applied to the Social Impact Fund.”

According to the Gambling Regulation Act, if an operator cannot refund a player’s money after their account is closed, that money will be transferred to the Social Impact Fund.

Entities that hold charitable or philanthropic licences to host charity lotteries will not be required to contribute to the social impact fund.

Social Impact Fund mirroring UK’s statutory levy?

The Social Impact Fund appears similar in structure and purpose to the UK’s recently imposed statutory levy.

The UK’s version was implemented in April, supporting the government’s plans to raise £100 million (€120 million/$126 million) for gambling-related harm prevention via a percentage of industry stakeholder profits.

According to a breakdown of rates published by the Gambling Commission on 7 April, the majority of remote licence holders will pay 1.1% of gross gambling yield (GGY).

However, a UK panel of gambling harm researchers last month raised concerns about the sector’s influence on research funded by the UK’s statutory levy.

The panel said in the past gambling researchers had been hesitant about taking funding that originated from the gambling sector due to ethical concerns.

Sam Chamberlain, professor of psychiatry at University of Southampton, told the panel that: “What you have is a dearth of good quality research, in my opinion, over the last decades, as many of the good researchers in the field of gambling would have not been prepared to take that money because of ethical and other concerns.

“In pragmatic terms, the industry has been giving cash to one massive charity that then has been handing out that money to various organisations. [But] I’m not saying that all of that work is invalid.”