Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS)
The Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) is Ireland’s free, confidential and independent money advice service, funded and supported by the Citizens Information Board, which helps you deal with problem debt and build a budget you can live on. It is not a gambling charity and not a debt company. For a player whose losses have turned into arrears, credit card balances or loans, MABS is the service that handles the money side while gambling support services handle the gambling itself.
What MABS actually does for you
MABS works through eight regional companies with offices around the country, plus a national helpline run by North Dublin MABS. The Citizens Information Board reports that MABS companies took on 16,526 new clients in 2025, and the helpline received 17,670 calls that year.
A money adviser sits down with your income and outgoings and turns them into a written budget. From there, the adviser can check whether you are missing any social welfare or other entitlements, and can contact your creditors on your behalf with an offer of payment you can actually afford.
The service costs nothing.
Where insolvency comes in
When a debt is too large for a repayment plan, MABS explains the statutory routes under the Insolvency Service of Ireland, such as a Debt Relief Notice, a Debt Settlement Arrangement or a Personal Insolvency Arrangement. Most MABS services are registered as Approved Intermediaries with the ISI, so they can assess whether a Debt Relief Notice suits you and take you through the application. For larger cases involving a home, the helpline is also the gateway to the Abhaile scheme, which provides vouchers for financial, legal and personal insolvency advice to people in mortgage arrears.
Where gambling players meet MABS
You will usually see MABS named on an operator’s responsible gambling page, on bank help pages about problem gambling, and in debt guidance from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. The CCPC’s debt action plan points people with gambling debt to MABS and the Insolvency Service of Ireland, alongside self-exclusion and asking your bank to block gambling transactions.
MABS advisers do not need the full story of your gambling to work on the money. What they do need is paperwork: a list of every debt you can remember, recent payslips or welfare statements, bank statements and any letters from creditors, especially anything mentioning court.
Here is where bonus terms and debt collide. A €100 deposit match at 40x wagering asks for €4,000 of bets before anything can be withdrawn, and a player chasing that figure on borrowed money is building the very debt MABS gets asked to untangle. Talk to MABS before you agree any new arrangement with a lender, and set a deposit limit with the operator in the meantime.
The helpline is 0818 07 2000, open Monday to Friday from 9am to 8pm according to the Citizens Information Board, and you can also email [email protected] or walk into a local office.
What MABS is often confused with
The most common mix-up is with the National Gambling Helpline, 1800 936 725, which is run by GamblingCare.ie and deals with the gambling behaviour rather than the debt. MABS will point you there, and that helpline will point you back to MABS when money is the pressing problem. Working on both at once is sensible, because a repayment plan drawn up while the gambling is still running tends not to hold.
MABS is also not a commercial debt management company. It is State-funded, charges no fee and sells nothing, whereas a private firm offering to consolidate your debts may charge for the same negotiation MABS does for nothing.
Nor is it a regulator.
Complaints about how an operator treated you go through the operator’s own complaints process and, where applicable, the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. MABS deals with your finances, not with whether a casino applied its terms fairly. One small trap: you may see an older 0761 07 2000 number printed on some pages, but MABS’s own site and the Citizens Information Board both list 0818 07 2000.
