As you walk down the street of any Irish town, you will note that a lot of places are closing down. And if you make a connection between this and the overall national mood, you might even get the impression that Ireland itself is closing down.

Except for one thing.

Gambling dens are still opening up, while everything else has been closing down. During a recent stroll down the town of Arklow, for example, I counted nine gambling dens of various kinds, including one which had opened in the last six months. Which is nothing really.

A friend who lives out by Swords says that there are now 11 betting offices in the greater Swords area.

So we've come a long way since I first marked your cards about this a few years ago in that revelatory moment when the one betting office on the main street in the village of Rathfarnham was joined by a competitor a few doors down, and instead of the anticipated fight to the death between the two, a few months later on the main street, a third office opened.

And the main street of Rathfarnham is not a very long street.

So in the context of this deep-rooted gambling phenomenon, it was strange to hear Fergus Finlay on RTE radio arguing against the proposed regulations which would legitimise the position of casinos in Ireland.

In the course of his polemic, he rightly connected gambling with all sorts of family problems. But then, if we are really examining the nature of addiction here, if we are looking for root causes, could we not turn it around and argue that it is family problems which give rise to all sorts of gambling?

Still, I wouldn't disagree with Finlay's disdain for slot machines, a form of gambling which is purely and horribly addictive, and, frankly, horrible in every way.

But it was still strange to hear him suggesting that something can be done about all this, starting with the casino issue.

In fact, nothing can be done about it now. At least, nothing of the kind suggested by Fergus Finlay.

If you were somehow to close down all the casinos which have been trading successfully for many years, you would not stop a single citizen of Ireland indulging in casino activities. For that, you would also have to close down the internet.

And while the Government has indeed done its best to limit our access to the internet, it probably has other challenges at the moment, which means that Paddy can still play his poker and his blackjack online, all night long, regardless of what happens on main street.

An intelligent man like Fergus Finlay must know that when you're dealing with an addiction, there's not much that the Minister can do about it in the short term. And there's not much he can do about in the long term either, if truth be told.

Because the gambler is a resourceful type. He is not going to stop gambling, just because the sort of place in which he usually does his gambling is no longer open.

He's not going to stand there smiling wryly, saying, "Well, that's the end of my gambling days, and I have to hand it to to those clever fellows in Leinster House who finally figured out how to stop me."

So when you are dealing with the gambling bug, you must realise that it is not just some social malaise but a global pandemic, which will not be contained in Ireland by putting a few

croupiers out of work for no good reason.

And being Ireland, even if casinos are banned overnight, they'll probably stay open anyway for the next 80 years or so, until someone stirs it up again.

If anything, the whiff of illegality will only make it more diabolically attractive, and probably just a bit more dangerous in every way. So the Minister might as well try to change human nature, while he's at it. Which would be another big ask, at this difficult time.

But will the recession create its own form of prohibition? If you can't afford to have a bet, does this not automatically prohibit you from betting?

The answer is an emphatic, "No".

As Tony Soprano observed, most activities of this dark nature are recession-proof.

Most likely the small punter will continue to punt in his small way, possibly with even more fervour, as he starts to believe that betting is perhaps his only hope of making an extra few quid -- in which case, to quote Michael Chabon, he will be "ruined again and again, by hope".

As for the addicted gambler, the standard definition of a gamble is when you bet more than you can afford. So if you couldn't afford it last year, and you still kept doing it, the fact that you can't afford it this year either will make no difference to you.

Recession may have come to this place called Ireland, but you are in a different place altogether.