04 November 2026
The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) this month launched a public consultation on introducing mandatory affordability checks for online and mobile gambling in Ireland, as part of the phased rollout of the groundbreaking Gambling Regulation Act 2024.
Why This Matters
The Gambling Regulation Act came into force earlier this year after extensive debate and parliamentary scrutiny. It aims to deliver comprehensive regulation of all types of gambling in Ireland, including online gambling that reaches consumers here from overseas. Beyond licencing, the Act introduces crucial safeguards for consumers and especially vulnerable groups like children.
The government tasking the GRAI to consult on mandatory affordability checks reflects the seriousness of those safeguards and the desire to introduce the most robust system possible. Affordability checks would represent one more mechanism to reduce problem gambling, an additional protective layer alongside other provisions in the Act.
What the Law Already Provides
The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 has already delivered a raft of individual protections. Under the Act, all online gambling operators have been banned from accepting credit card payments, to prevent problem gamblers from going into debt. Players can now set monetary limits on their own online and mobile gambling, restricting how much they can stake over different periods of time.
The GRAI itself has powers to limit the total amount of money a customer can lodge with any single operator, to prevent rapid and uncontrolled escalation of spending. Gamblers seeking to safely exclude themselves from online gambling can also be added to a new National Gambling Exclusion Register, a unified national system.
The Consultation
To introduce mandatory affordability checks by law, the GRAI is now consulting on proposed new regulations. These would extend the existing controls on problem gambling. Driven by government policy, the consultation kicked off on 30 July, giving the gambling industry, relevant stakeholders and the public until 20 August 3pm to make their views known. The GRAI's own stated purpose for the consultation is to take expert and public input on its proposals before commencing work on an actual regulatory text.
Background to the Affordability-Checks Debate
The debate on introducing affordability checking for gambling accounts is not new. In May 2022, as Ireland's Department of Justice was drafting the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, an Oireachtas pre-legislative scrutiny committee recommended—by an 8-5 vote—that the Authority be empowered to conduct affordability checks on consumers, regardless of income. The logic was that an individual's stated income, especially self-reported income, was not a reliable indicator of how much gambling they could and should be allowed to do.
Then, in January 2023, the Department of Justice rejected the recommendations, citing clear concerns about data privacy protections and data-handling obligations under Ireland's data protection regime. Given the country lacks a credit scoring system, there were serious dangers in opening up gambling history to broad surveillance. Data security researchers have similarly raised concerns that affordability checks would require sharing huge amounts of private financial data between banks, gambling operators, and the regulator.
What Happens Next
Gambling regulation is still at an early stage in the Gambling Regulation Act 2024's phased rollout. The Minister has stated that online sports betting will be fully subject to GRAI regulation from 1 July, while in-person sports betting will transition in December of this year as existing Revenue CAO licenses expire. Licensing for casino-style gaming will begin in early 2027 and for charitable lotteries later.
The publication of the GRAI's consultation report will be the next milestone in the Act's progress. The legislative path of the Regulations introducing affordability checks will further inform the rollout, as will democratic debate around the efficacy and proportionality of the checks. Ideally, it will be a controlled experiment in how far, and at what cost, national gambling regulation can be pushed, for the benefit of the responsible Irish society.