Younger citizens will not remember the controversies of those times when public indignation was high against the explotation of the poor by gambling arcade owners countrywide.Numerous get rich quick merchants from all walks of live grew very rich from this racketeering-not least among them the now multi-millionaire,Isle of Man based, Jim Kennedy of the “Carrickmines rezoning scandal” fame.
I have intimate knowledge and good memory of the one armed bandit phenomenon which destroyed the lives of countless poor people in the eighties.A close friend serviced the machines throughout the country. There was no will to deal with this problem in the Fianna Fail Cabinet.. One ex garda became a very wealthy man operating a “casino” in the Dublin 7 area, at the time that OConnell street and the surrounding environs had been turned into a mini Las Vegas.
Many of those who grew rich were Fianna Fail supporters-just as many of those who have enriched themselves in such activities as illegal dumping, in recent years.Mr Ahern was a guest at the opening of one such individuals new hotel in Kerry, but later distanced himself from this scoundrel.Fianna Fail did a miraculous U turn on the casino plan-but only after sounding out the inveterate opposition to their scheme by everybody in Dublin 15 (the proposed location) and many other decent thinking people who were sickened by the existing exploitation of the weak and the poor in our society.The hapless gaming addicts were at that time contributing their miserable weekly income, to the enrichment frenzy, of numerous opportunists of all kinds, in pubs, fish and chip shops, restaurants, and gaming arcades countrywide. The laws regulating the stake and prize payouts were being flaunted.No enforcement procedures ever materialized. It was like alcohol ‘Prohibition’ in America, but with thousands of gaming ‘Speakeasys’ in every town and city.The gardai were less interested than the politicians.Whats new.?