Gambling Regulation Act 2024 — what it actually does

Last reviewed 13 May 2026

Written by Mariia Magus · iGaming Content Researcher · Reviewed 2026-05-13

The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 is the single piece of legislation that replaced Ireland’s older Betting and Gaming statutes and set up a new national gambling regulator. If you came here from a news headline, the short version is this: Ireland passed the Act in October 2024, the Minister for Justice commenced it on 5 February 2026, and a new statutory body — the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) — has been live and issuing the first applications since early 2026. Operator licences are being rolled out in phases through 2026.

This explainer covers Ireland (Republic of). It cites the statute and the regulator at every step so you can verify what it says. Our wider source rules are on the Methodology page.

What the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 is

The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 is Act 35 of 2024 — statute text on the Irish Statute Book. It was passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas in October 2024 and signed into law that same month. Commencement of the operative provisions happened on 5 February 2026, when the Minister for Justice signed the order that allowed the GRAI to begin issuing licences (Department of Justice commencement press release).

What the Act does is bigger than any single rule change. The 2024 statute collapses a stack of older laws — the Betting Act 1931, the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956, and the Totalisator Act 1929 — into one modern framework (Citizens Information — Gambling Regulatory Authority). Inside that framework, a single licensing regime covers both online and in-person gambling. Advertising and certain marketing practices are restricted outright. Statutory safer-gambling duties now sit on licensees. A new Social Impact Fund, financed by an industry levy, supports research, education, and treatment for gambling harm.

The Act applies to operators that target customers in Ireland, regardless of where the operator itself is based. That extraterritorial reach is deliberate.

The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI)

The Act establishes the GRAI as Ireland’s statutory regulator for gambling. The regulator was formally established on 9 February 2026 and its homepage is grai.ie. It is the body that issues licences, supervises operators, investigates complaints, and enforces the Act’s safer-gambling and advertising rules (Citizens Information — Gambling Regulatory Authority).

A short list of what the GRAI is responsible for:

• Issuing, renewing, and revoking gambling licences across betting, gaming, lotteries, and gambling-related services.
• Supervising and investigating licensees — including operator compliance with the Act’s advertising and inducement rules.
• Standing up and operating the future National Gambling Exclusion Register: a single self-exclusion register covering every GRAI-licensed operator.
• Administering the industry-funded Social Impact Fund, which is intended to back research, prevention, and treatment of gambling harm.
• Issuing guidance, codes, and regulations that licensees must comply with.

As of 2026-05-13, the GRAI has not yet published any operator on a licensee register. We say that plainly because it matters: any third-party page that claims an operator is “GRAI-licensed” before the regulator itself lists them is wrong. If you are trying to check whether an operator is GRAI-licensed, the public register at grai.ie is the only source you should rely on, and that register is still being stood up.

The licence categories under the Act

The Act creates several licence categories. Some are open for applications; one or two are not yet open at all. The dates below come from the regulator and the Department of Justice commencement statement.

• B2C remote (online) betting licences. Applications opened on 5 February 2026. The first licences are issuable from 1 July 2026.
• B2C remote betting intermediary licences. Applications opened on 5 February 2026 alongside the main remote-betting category.
• B2C in-person betting licences. Applications opened on 5 February 2026. Existing in-person operators are scheduled to transition from their current Revenue permissions from 1 December 2026.
• B2C remote gaming licences. Online-casino-style licences are a later phase of the rollout and are not yet open for applications.
• B2B “gambling related services” licences. The framework is defined in the Act but the rollout for B2B licences is still pending.

The B2B category is worth one paragraph on its own. The Act requires a licence for businesses that provide “gambling related services” to B2C licensees. Whether independent affiliate, comparison, or review websites are caught by that definition is one of the questions we explicitly do not answer on this site without qualified Irish legal advice. It is flagged for solicitor review in our Methodology page.

Gambling advertising and inducements under the Act

The Act’s most-discussed provisions are the advertising and inducement rules. The headline items:

• Under the Act’s Part 6 marketing provisions, broadcast gambling advertising on TV and radio is restricted between 05:30 and 21:00 (Department of Justice press release).
• Under the Act’s inducement provisions in Part 6, marketing offers such as free bets, free credit, VIP treatment, and free hospitality are prohibited.
• Advertising directed at children is prohibited. The Act’s marketing restrictions also prohibit gambling advertising in proximity to schools (100 metres per the Department of Justice press release), advertising that uses under-25 imagery in non-betting contexts, and advertising that suggests gambling solves financial problems or improves social or sexual standing.
• Social-media marketing targeted on-demand is restricted unless the recipient already holds an account with the operator and follows the operator’s channel.

Ireland’s separate self-regulatory advertising rules — the ASAI Code Section 10 (Gambling) — sit alongside the Act and add their own requirements, including the safer-gambling message in every marketing communication (ASAI Code rule 10.10). The Act is the statutory backstop; the ASAI Code is the advertising-industry self-regulatory layer. Both apply.

Whether the watershed restricts an always-on static web page — for example, an operator’s home page that does not push notifications — is not settled by the Act language and is currently flagged for solicitor review. We do not give a view here.

Safer-gambling duties and the National Gambling Exclusion Register

Operators that hold GRAI licences are required to offer safer-gambling tools to every customer. Expected baseline tools include deposit and loss limits, time-out controls, reality checks, and operator-level self-exclusion. Detailed obligations come from the Act itself and from the codes the GRAI is now issuing (GRAI — Get Help portal).

The Act also creates a National Gambling Exclusion Register: a single register, run by the GRAI, that excludes a person from all GRAI-licensed operators simultaneously. As of 2026-05-13 the national register is in development and is expected to launch alongside the full licensing framework in late 2026. Until it goes live, the only available self-exclusion in Ireland is operator-level — handled inside the account on each operator’s site. If you are looking for help today, our Responsible Gambling page lists the services.

Penalties and enforcement

Administrative financial sanctions under the Act’s enforcement provisions go up to €20 million or 10% of a licensee’s turnover, whichever is higher (Department of Justice press release). The Act also gives the regulator court remedies — the GRAI may petition the High Court to stop non-compliant advertising — and some breaches carry criminal penalties under the Act itself. Operating without the required licence, or advertising gambling unlawfully, exposes a business to criminal as well as regulatory consequences.

Fines at this level are designed to deter operators with large turnover from treating breaches as a cost of doing business. The number is comparable to the modern administrative-sanction ceilings used by other European regulators.

What is still unresolved as of the page’s review date

Some things the Act either does not answer or answers in language that needs interpretation. We list them so you know what to expect over the next six to twelve months:

• Affiliate and review-site status. Whether an independent affiliate, comparison, or review website is caught by the B2B “gambling related services” licence requirement.
• Static-web watershed scope. Whether the broadcast watershed restricts an always-on web page that does not actively push notifications to a user.
• Offshore operator status during the transition. Many operators currently serving Irish customers hold MGA, Gibraltar, UK, or Curaçao licences. Their status pre-transition, before they obtain a GRAI licence, is being clarified in regulator practice rather than in the Act text.
• First operator on the licensee register. As of 2026-05-13 no operator has been issued a GRAI licence. The first remote-betting licences are issuable from 1 July 2026.

We list these publicly because we would rather tell you what we do not know than guess. The full set of open questions lives on our Methodology page.

Where to follow the rollout

If you want to keep an eye on the rollout yourself:

• grai.ie — guidance, announcements, the future licensee register, and the consultation papers the regulator publishes.
• The Department of Justice press-release page on gov.ie — commencement orders, ministerial statements.
• Citizens Information’s Gambling Regulatory Authority page — kept current with plain-English summaries.

We also update the Regulation hub when something material changes.

This page is informational. It is 18+. It is not legal advice — for that, speak to an Irish solicitor. Our editorial rules and source hierarchy are on the Methodology page. If a date or section reference on this page is wrong, please tell us via the Contact page and we will fix it visibly.