Irish Gambling Regulator Reveals Detailed Three-Year Strategy

The three-year plan, created under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, demonstrates the Authority’s goal to license, surveil, and enforce activities such as betting, gaming, and lottery online as well as in-person. The GRAI aims to use licence fees and operator duties to become financially self-sufficient within three years.

Chairperson Paul Quinn and CEO Anne Marie Caulfield highlighted the need to pair consumer safeguarding with just regulatory methods.

The Authority has six fundamental objectives: Licensing, Monitoring & Compliance, Enforcement, Consumer Protection & Awareness, People & Governance, and Digital First. The new regulator will be entrusted with managing gambling-related harms, introducing consumer defence, and tackling money laundering.

To accomplish this, GRAI has the power to enforce administrative sanctions, licence revocations, and criminal prosecutions for unlicensed or non-compliant companies.

Enacting a phased licensing scheme is paramount to the strategy’s success. Meticulous evaluations and compliance specifications will have to be met by all parties, from sizable commercial institutions to charities. Stakeholders will be consulted to encourage honesty and circulate facts-based policy actions.

The GRAI has confirmed the introduction of a National Gambling Exclusion Register, which will allow individuals wishing to self-exclude from all licensed online gambling platforms to do so using only one online portal.

This scheme will be run in conjunction with the Social Impact Fund, which will support addiction treatment, education and research. The fund, subsidised by industry taxes, is predicted to reach a minimum annual sum of €14 million.

To prevent betting-related corruption, the authority is establishing a Sports Integrity Unit alongside Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing systems.

A “Digital First” tactic will use data analysis and AI to magnify oversight and help with licence applications for sites, public registers and compliance monitoring.

By 2027, GRAI expects to be fully operational. The regulator will be held accountable by the Minister for Justice and the Oireachtas using annual plans and performance indicators to measure success.

Players in the continuously developing Irish gambling world can anticipate this to be a candid, credible and controlled regulatory programme which puts their safety first.