Comparison Guide to Old and New Casinos in Ireland: What Changed Over Time

For most of the last century, gambling in Ireland ran on two laws written before television, let alone smartphones. That ended on 1 July 2026, when the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland issued the first licences under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 and drew a hard line between the old Irish market and the new one. Six weeks in, the shape of that line is clearer, and it is not where most people assume it falls.

The gap between the two eras is wider than casual observers realise, and it is far from uniform. Some parts of the market changed overnight. Others have not moved at all. Comparison and review sites tracking old and new casinos in Ireland, among them betinireland.ie/casinos, spent the summer rewriting their licence-verification sections because the regulator now answers questions that previously had no answer at all. Here is what actually changed, what did not, and where the old rules still govern play.

The old system: two laws, one loophole and no legal casinos

The pre-2026 framework rested on the Betting Act 1931 and the Gaming and Lotteries Act 1956. Betting was licensed by the Revenue Commissioners, which made it closer to a tax registration than a conduct regime. There was no dedicated gambling regulator, no statutory duty of care owed to players, and no central register showing who was permitted to take money from Irish customers.

There were also no licensed commercial casinos, and there still are none. Commercial casino gambling was never authorised under the 1956 Act, so land-based venues in Dublin, Cork and elsewhere operate as private members clubs: free membership, photo ID at the door, and a legal footing that predates the industry it now houses. Membership is open to anyone over 18. That model is still standing today.

Online was looser again. An operator taking sports bets from Irish customers needed a remote bookmaker permit from Revenue. Online casino games sat outside that entirely, served under Maltese, Gibraltarian, British or Caribbean licences, with no Irish authority a player could escalate a dispute to.

What the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 changed

The 2024 Act repealed the patchwork and created a single statutory regulator. The GRAI was established on a statutory basis in March 2025 under chief executive Anne Marie Caulfield and chairperson Paul Quinn, then spent its first year building the licensing system rather than issuing licences. The sequence since has been deliberate:

• 4 February 2026: Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan signs the commencement order activating the licensing, enforcement and complaints functions.
• 9 February 2026: the GRAI opens applications through its operator portal for remote betting, remote betting intermediary and in-person betting licences.
• 1 July 2026: the first business-to-consumer remote betting and betting intermediary licences take effect, replacing the Revenue regime for online and telephone betting.
• 1 December 2026: in-person betting licences begin, as existing Revenue-issued permits expire.
• 2027 to 2028: gaming, lottery, business-to-business and charitable licences follow, per the regulator’s own published timeline.

The obligations attached to a licence are the substantive change. Licensees face fines of up to 20 million euro or 10 per cent of turnover, whichever is higher. Credit cards are banned for gambling and operators cannot extend credit. ATMs are prohibited on gambling premises. Age verification, an obligation to pay out winnings, and closing an account on request are now licence conditions rather than goodwill. The Act also establishes a National Gambling Exclusion Register and a Social Impact Fund financed by licensees. The full framework and the licensee register are published by the regulator at grai.ie.

Old versus new, side by side

The table below sets the two regimes against each other on the points that decide where a player actually stands.

What has not changed: the casino gap

The most misread part of the new regime is what it does not yet cover. The current licensing phase is betting only. Casino games, slot machines and lotteries are not classified as betting services at this stage, and the regulator’s own statement of 30 June 2026 places gaming licence applications across 2027 and 2028.

The practical effect is blunt. No online casino in Ireland holds a GRAI licence today, and none can. The public register covers remote betting licensees only. Any site offering roulette, blackjack or slots to Irish players is still running on a Maltese, Gibraltarian, British, Curacao, Antiguan or Anjouan authorisation. Those are genuine regulators with genuine complaint routes, but they are not Irish ones, and the standards between them differ considerably.

Land-based venues are in the same position. The private members club model persists untouched. Betting shops move under GRAI oversight on 1 December 2026, but the clubs are a separate question the Act leaves to the gaming phase. Anyone reading a headline about Ireland regulating its casinos in 2026 is reading about betting shops and bookmakers, not gaming floors.

What Irish players should check in the meantime

Until the gaming phase arrives, the verification burden sits with the player. Four checks do most of the work.

1. Check the register, not the badge. A site footer can claim anything. The GRAI publishes its licensee list, so a remote betting licence claim is verifiable today. A claimed GRAI casino licence cannot be genuine yet, which makes it a useful early warning.
2. Know which regulator actually holds the account. Malta, Gibraltar, the UK, Curacao, Antigua and Anjouan differ sharply in complaint handling and dispute powers. Find the licence number in the footer and confirm it on that regulator’s own register rather than on the operator’s word.
3. Treat a refused credit card as compliance, not a fault. Licensed operators are barred from accepting them. A site that still takes a credit card for gambling is telling you something about the regime it answers to.
4. Use the strongest exclusion tool available. The National Gambling Exclusion Register works across GRAI licensees. For sites outside the Irish regime, self-exclusion remains operator by operator, which means setting it up individually and keeping a record.

What comes next

Three milestones are worth watching. In-person betting licences commence on 1 December 2026. Gaming licences, the ones that would finally bring online casinos inside the Irish perimeter, are expected across 2027 and 2028. And the advertising provisions, including the broadcast watershed between 5:30am and 9pm, sponsorship restrictions and the ban on targeted inducements, are legislated but largely not yet commenced. Until the relevant orders are signed, the advertising a player sees is governed mostly by voluntary codes.

Readers who follow how regulated markets get built in stages will recognise the pattern. North Carolina ran its own phased sports-betting rollout, with licensing, enforcement and tax provisions arriving on separate clocks, and Triad City Beat’s news coverage has tracked the local version of that story. Ireland is running the same play at a national scale, and it is roughly halfway through.

For now, the honest summary is that Ireland has a modern gambling regulator, a real enforcement regime and a public register, and that none of it yet reaches the casino games most people mean when they say casinos in Ireland. The old rules and the new ones are running side by side, and they will keep doing so for at least another year.