A ROW over the introduction of electronic gaming machines in betting shops has intensified with the launch of a press campaign against their introduction.
Prime Table Games, which makes games for casinos, has placed advertisements in national newspapers urging people to sign a petition opposing the introduction of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) in betting shops.
The terminals, which offer electronic versions of games such as roulette and poker, offer incredibly unfair odds compared to the casino games they seek to replicate, the company claims.
The company is running a similar campaign in the UK to get the terminals out of bookmakers there.
Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte has also re-entered the political fray, accusing Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern of "looking both ways" on the issue.
Mr Ahern has expressed concern about the addictive nature of FOBTs, but Mr Rabbitte accused him of hoping the appointment of a "handpicked" cross-party committee on gambling to decide the matter would get him, the Minister, "off the hook" on undertakings given to bookmakers.
Mr Rabbitte described the machines as "turbo-charged one-arm bandits" and the "crack cocaine of gambling" and said Labour would not take part in the committee unless the terminals were excluded.
"Facilitating young people to lose their dole money on these machines is not a policy aspiration I share with this Government," he told a conference on gambling this week.
The terminals were socially disastrous and highly addictive, he said, with a higher rate of addiction than for one-armed bandits or alcohol. If they were introduced in bookmakers here, gamblers would lose about €100 million a year.
Mr Rabbitte said the recently published report by the Government's Casino Review Group recommended against the introduction of the terminals in bookmakers' offices.
This finding was "inconvenient" because then minister for finance Brian Cowan had "given the nod" to bookmakers that Government would bring forward legislation to allow the terminals.
