Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI)
The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) is the independent statutory body, known in Irish as Údarás Rialála Cearrbhachais na hÉireann, set up under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 to license, supervise and enforce the rules on betting, gaming and certain lotteries in the State. It replaces a patchwork of older Acts going back to the Gaming Act 1744, and its powers arrive in stages through ministerial commencement orders rather than all at once, which is why what it can do for a player depends on which part of the Act has actually been switched on.
What the GRAI is empowered to do
The Act gives the Authority a set of statutory functions: licensing gambling businesses, establishing a National Gambling Exclusion Register, running a Social Impact Fund, setting standards for gambling products, imposing obligations on advertising and inducements, handling complaints and taking measures against prohibited gambling.
Its enforcement tools run from a warning or an extra licence condition up to suspension or revocation of a licence, and the GRAI states that financial penalties can reach €20 million or 10 per cent of turnover, with prison sentences of up to eight years for serious breaches such as failing to protect children.
The register and the fund are created in the text of the Act, at sections 46 to 49 and 50 to 55 respectively, but a section existing on paper is not the same as a service you can use, and the GRAI has not yet confirmed the exclusion register as operational, while the fund is described by the Authority as something it intends to launch.
Those obligations bind licence holders only.
How GRAI licensing has been phased in
The Authority was established by a first commencement order in March 2025. A second order, signed by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Jim O’Callaghan TD, on 4 February 2026, allowed it to accept betting licence applications and also commenced its enforcement and complaints functions.
Remote betting and betting intermediary licences issued by the GRAI commenced on 1 July 2026, covering online and telephone betting, and the Authority said in-person betting licences would follow later in the year.
Gaming, lottery, B2B and charitable licences are scheduled by the GRAI for applications across 2027 and 2028, and no commencement order for gaming licences had been found when we checked, so online casino games sit outside Irish licensing until that phase opens.
The advertising watershed and the inducement rules in section 149 are a separate matter, because the Department of Justice has said publicly that the advertising provisions have not yet been commenced, even though other duties, such as not unreasonably withholding a customer’s winnings, already apply to licensees.
Where players meet the GRAI and its limits
For most readers the GRAI shows up in two places: the public register of licence holders, which can be viewed, filtered and downloaded, and the complaints route, which the Irish Times reported is already handling cases, many about difficulty getting money out of online bookmakers.
What I check first is whether a betting site’s name appears on that register, because a sign-up page that only quotes an MGA, Kahnawake or Curaçao licence tells you about a foreign regulator, not about the GRAI.
That distinction matters more than it looks. A licence from Malta or Curaçao is issued under that jurisdiction’s rules, it does not bring an operator inside the Irish credit card ban or the Irish exclusion register, and a complaint to the GRAI about an operator it never licensed has nowhere to go, so a foreign licence should not be read as offering the protection of an Irish one.
The GRAI is also often confused with the Revenue Commissioners, who issued the older betting permits that still appear alongside GRAI licences during the transition.
