National Gambling Exclusion Register

Section 45 of the Act sets out the mechanics, and they are more specific than most self-exclusion schemes you will have met on a casino site.

You make an application to the GRAI in whatever form the regulator specifies. The register then records your name and address, any accounts you hold with licensed operators, and a “relevant date” from which the exclusion applies. That date cannot be earlier than one day after your details are entered, so there is a short gap between applying and being blocked.

The GRAI then notifies the licensees, and the register is built so that they can check it. The regulator describes it as a way to stop gambling for a period of time or indefinitely, and the Act lets you choose an indefinite exclusion.

Getting off the register has a floor. Under section 47, you can ask in writing to have your entry removed only after 6 months from the relevant date. Read that clause carefully: it is a minimum before you may ask, not an automatic end date, and nothing in it switches your accounts back on by itself.

You are also expected to tell the GRAI in writing if an entry about you is wrong or your circumstances change.

Once you are on the register, the duty sits with the operator, not with you. The GRAI states that if you try to gamble during the exclusion period, the operator must take reasonable steps to stop you.

The Act also allows the regulator to require licensees to promote the register, so expect to see it signposted in the responsible gambling section of Irish-licensed sites, alongside deposit limits and reality checks.

This matters for bonus terms, which is the part of the market we read most closely. A welcome offer, free spins or cashback is of no use to an excluded person, and an operator that lets one through has failed its duty, whatever its promotional terms say.

Two limits are worth knowing before you rely on it. The register is tied to Irish B2C licensees offering gambling by remote means, so it does not block a site licensed only elsewhere, and the statutory text centres on online play rather than betting shops. The Act also requires the GRAI to review the register within three years of its establishment and every three years after that, so the detail may change.

Until the register opens, self-exclusion in Ireland is done operator by operator.

The register is not the same thing as the self-exclusion button inside your casino account. Section 48 says plainly that nothing in the chapter affects your right to exclude yourself directly with a single licensee under that operator’s own arrangement. Both routes exist side by side.

The difference is reach. An operator exclusion covers one brand, on that brand’s terms, and the periods on offer vary from one operator to the next. A register entry covers every licensee within its scope from one application, with the six-month floor on removal set in law rather than in a terms page.

Not GAMSTOP, not a cool-off

Irish readers often use GAMSTOP as shorthand, but that is the British scheme for sites licensed in Great Britain, and an entry there does not put you on the Irish register. The reverse is also true.

A cooling-off period is something else again. It is a short break offered by an operator, usually lifting by itself at the end, whereas the register is a formal statutory exclusion that you have to apply to leave.

If you want a break now, the practical step is to self-exclude with each operator you use, then add the register once it is available on grai.ie.