Lawmakers on Thursday continued seeking ways of barring recipients of Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) from gambling at casinos, amid an acknowledgment they have to tread carefully due to privacy considerations.

MPs and officials flirted with a number of ideas, such as issuing a special card for GMI beneficiaries – proposed by Data Protection Commissioner Maria Christofidou. But some MPs cautioned that this might ‘stigmatise’ individuals.

The overriding concern is to shield GMI recipients from wasting their money on gambling, but also finding some means to check that these people do qualify for the benefit – that they do not make earnings at casinos by drawing on the government benefit.

A key aspect of the discussion revolved around the access that the Welfare Benefits Administration Service (Wbas) has to bank account data of GMI recipients.

Currently, the service has limited access – the account balance and the highest balance at a specific period in time.

An official with the service said that whereas this data may indicate gambling activity, on its own it is not sufficient proof.

MPs heard of the case of a GMI recipient who had about €3,000 in her bank account, and who later received a €5,000 subsidy for the installation of solar panels. The total balance in her account exceeded the GMI eligibility threshold, and so the benefit was suspended until authorities investigated the provenance of the funds.

The Data Protection Commissioner said that a legal opinion issued back in 2022 had found no legal basis existed for drawing detailed bank account information. However, the Commissioner’s office later revisited the matter, determining that a legal basis does exist for that.

Harris Tsangarides, executive director of the Gaming & Casino Supervision Commission, said that since 2023 they’ve identified a pattern of heightened gambling coinciding with the time that GMI is paid out – around the middle of the month.

This led the commission to reach out to Wbas to find a way of checking whether individuals issued with a casino membership card are GMI recipients.

He said the commission and Wbas together found a “technical solution” for cross-referencing this data.

The procedure would be straightforward – checking a person’s ID number and then returning a yes or no answer to the system – meaning whether the person is a GMI beneficiary or not.

According to Tsangarides, the issuance of casino membership cards is still not universal – for example, it is not fully implemented at the casinos in Nicosia and Limassol.

As of mid-2027, the intention is to make issuance of these cards mandatory at all casinos.

An official from the National Betting Authority (NBA) said that eight of ten gamblers play online.

For brick-and-mortar betting outlets, identification is more difficult, as a large proportion of betting activity is anonymous.

But as far as online betting goes, the authority stated it’s ready to bar GMI beneficiaries by utilising the self-exclusion platform that is already in operation.

“Technically speaking, we’re ready to go. If the relevant legislation passes, we could on the same day place them on the self-exclusion platform,” the NBA official said.

Operated by the NBA, the self-exclusion platform allows individuals to exclude themselves from online gambling sites. To register, people need to provide their mobile phone number, a valid email address, and a valid ID document.

Participants choose the duration of the self-exclusion period, and may also de-register themselves from the platform.

Disy MP Giorgos Pamboridis pointed out that in other countries, entry to a casino is permitted once the person has furnished an income tax statement, showing that their income is above a certain threshold.

On this point, Tsangarides said this is not the case in Cyprus – anyone is allowed to enter the premises, however there are restrictions on who can gamble.

By law, minors and persons classified as financially vulnerable may not gamble.

At the same time, though, the legislation currently does not class GMI recipients as ‘vulnerable’.