The sheer insidiousness of gambling can be seen in a different story which broke this week: On Wednesday, this newspaper reported that gambling giant Flutter announced it is to permanently shutter 21 Paddy Power shops in the Republic, affecting 78 jobs, on the grounds that those shops are “underperforming”.

How to reconcile that development with what we learned from the ESRI this week — that one in 10 Irish adults are now either problem gamblers or report gambling has caused multiple problems in their lives?

The obvious conclusion is that the penetration of online gambling has been so thorough that bricks-and-mortar bookmakers are no longer as important as the personalised bookmaker thousands are carrying around in their pockets — the gambling apps on their smartphones.

Taken in conjunction with the relentless advertising campaigns and endorsement partnerships driven by gambling, often peopled by celebrities promoting gambling as a family-friendly and harmless activity, and it is little wonder so many people are having problems with gambling? 

The possibility of collecting easy money can be very difficult to resist. In another field — though one with no little resemblance to gambling — the trial began this week in the US of Sam Bankman-Fried for defrauding people through his crypto empire.

Whether there is a substantive difference between crypto speculation and backing horses remains to be seen.

The Government has proposed gambling reforms which are set to introduce strict curbs on advertising, as well as a social impact fund for industry to fund problem gambling initiatives. Those measures are sorely needed.

Trip came at a bad time for minister

This newspaper reported this week that Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport, and Media Catherine Martin led a delegation to the Ryder Cup which included her husband, Green Party TD Francis Noel Duffy, an assistant secretary general, the principal officer who heads the major sports events division of the department, the minister’s policy adviser, and her private secretary.

The tab for the minister and her partner’s four-night stay was picked up by Ryder Cup Europe. Mr Duffy paid for his own travel arrangements and those of the delegation were covered by the department.

Before rushing to judgement, it must be pointed out that planning and executing a major international sports event is difficult — one need only look at the various issues which have plagued the Rugby World Cup in France, from problems with train travel to a plague of bedbugs in Paris, and this in a country with plenty of experience in holding major events. On that basis, sending senior civil servants to learn from the experience of those who hosted the most recent event of its type makes sense.

However, Ms Martin will also be aware that the optics of her trip to Italy will raise eyebrows. In recent days, she also broadened the scope of the Mazars inquiry into RTÉ, an inquiry which will be paying particularly close attention to a range of corporate hospitality issues.

Accepting the hospitality of a private company bringing a lucrative event to Ireland now looks like an error in political judgement, particularly as it is expected that the issue of senior management figures in RTÉ attending sports events will figure prominently in the inquiry mentioned above.

There is also the potential for trouble down the line. If the minister’s advisers and civil servants were brought to Italy to learn how to run the Ryder Cup in Ireland in four years’ time, what happens if none of those people are in situ come 2027?

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The USA's First Dog is banned 

After the chaos in Washington early this week with the departure of House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy, another controversial exit is now holding the attention of many in the hotbed of US politics. 

US president Joe Biden’s dog Commander has left the White House with immediate effect and under something of a cloud.

Commander has a mixed reputation — in appearance a playful German shepherd, the dog’s behaviour behind the scenes leaves something to be desired.

He has bitten many of the staff members in the White House and appears to have developed a particular taste for the Secret Service agents whose job it is to protect the president. In one incident, an agent had to use the chair he was sitting on as a shield to keep Commander at bay.

Mr Biden is not the first man in his position to run into controversy because of a pet dog. Richard Nixon famously defended his family’s right to keep their spaniel, Checkers, when he was Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, while Lyndon Johnson was widely criticised when pictures emerged of him lifting his pet beagles up by the ears.

For the most part, however, having a pet roam the White House can be interpreted as a humanising touch for a president, suggesting a love of animals most voters share. Former president Donald Trump, for example, does not have pets.