Gambling is for adults: you must be 18 or over. If it has stopped being something you choose and started being something you chase, you do not need to work it out alone. The national helpline, 1800 936 725, is confidential and costs nothing to call.
Everything below was checked on 25 September 2026 against the organisations’ own websites.
Who to contact in Ireland
| Service | Run by | How to reach it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| GamblingCare.ie national helpline | Answered by Dunlewey Addiction Services; funded through the Gambling Awareness Trust | Freephone 1800 936 725 | 24 hours, every day of the year, according to Dunlewey |
| problemgambling.ie | Extern Problem Gambling, a registered charity | Call or text 089 241 5401 — they call you back | Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm |
| Extern online counselling | Extern Problem Gambling | Book through problemgambling.ie | Anyone on the island of Ireland whose life has been affected by harmful gambling |
| Gamblers Anonymous Ireland | Peer-support meetings | Helpline +353 1 872 1133, or find a meeting by county | Helpline 10am to 10pm, seven days |
| Your GP | — | Your usual surgery | The HSE’s advice is to start with your GP or healthcare provider |
Two differences worth knowing. GamblingCare.ie is run and paid for by the Gambling Awareness Trust, a charity that is wholly funded by donations from the betting and gaming industry. Extern says on its own site that it is not funded by the gambling industry. Both are free to use, and both take calls about someone else’s gambling as well as your own — Dunlewey’s line is for people affected by “their own or a family member’s” gambling.
The HSE’s Drugs and Alcohol Helpline (1800 459 459) is for drugs and alcohol; for gambling the HSE points people to GamblingCare.ie.
If you live in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is a different jurisdiction, and UK services do not all reach it. GamCare, the main helpline in Great Britain, says its helpline does not cover Northern Ireland. The Dunlewey line has a Northern Ireland number — 08000 886 725 — and Extern’s call-back line there is 07537 188 575.
How common problem gambling is here
The most recent national figures come from the ESRI, which surveyed 2,850 adults anonymously online in August 2023, for the Department of Justice and the team setting up the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (ESRI Research Series 169):
- 3.3% of adults met the threshold for problem gambling, about one in 30, or roughly 130,000 people.
- A further 7.1% showed moderate signs of it.
- 74% had gambled in some form in the previous four weeks; 35% had gambled online.
- Among people with problem gambling, online gambling made up three fifths of what they spent, and slot machines and casino games, particularly online, were more common among them than among other gamblers.
Problem gambling is not rare, and it is not a character flaw.
Check your own gambling
The regulator publishes the Problem Gambling Severity Index as a self-test: nine questions, developed for the general population rather than for clinics. The regulator reads the score like this: 0–2 low risk, 3–7 moderate risk, 8 or more high risk. The ESRI used the same scale, with 8 as its cut-off for problem gambling.
A score is a prompt, not a diagnosis. If the number surprises you, one of the services above is the next step.
Set the limit before you play
Limits work best when they are set cold, before the first bet, and are hard to undo.
- Decide a monthly amount you can lose. Treat it as spent the moment you deposit it.
- Use the casino’s own deposit limit. Look for it in the account settings and set it before the first deposit, not after a loss.
- Block gambling payments at your bank. Several Irish banks and Revolut offer a gambling block; our guide to blocking gambling payments has the steps for each.
- Don’t chase. Money lost is gone. A bigger stake to win it back is how a bad night becomes a bad month.
- Watch the clock as well as the balance. Time spent is the other half of the damage.
The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 now writes some of this into law for operators licensed by the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI). A licensee must give you a way to set a spending limit, must not let you raise or remove it during the period you chose (section 164), and may not take payment by credit card — or through an e-wallet loaded from one — or offer you credit (section 165). Both sections have applied to GRAI licensees since 5 February 2026. Online casinos cannot hold a GRAI licence yet — casino games will be licensed later than betting — so on a casino site today, the limits you get are the ones its own licence and terms provide. Check them before you deposit.
Self-exclusion: what exists and what doesn’t yet
You can ask any casino you have used to close your account or self-exclude you, through its responsible gambling settings or its support team. The Act says its national register will not affect the self-exclusion schemes operators run themselves (section 48).
A National Gambling Exclusion Register, one request that excludes you from every GRAI-licensed operator, is set out in the Act but is not running yet. The sections that create it (44–49) have not commenced, the regulator lists the register among the protections still to come, and it has not published a start date. Once it opens, the Act allows online self-exclusion for an indefinite period (section 45), with the option to ask for removal only after six months (section 47).
GAMSTOP, which many readers know from the UK, is open to people living in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland included, and blocks operators licensed in Great Britain. It is not a scheme for the Republic.
Until the Irish register opens, the strongest barrier is a combination: self-exclude at each site you have used, switch on your bank’s gambling block, and install blocking software. The blocking guide covers all three.
For family and friends
Gambling harm reaches the people around the gambler, too. The national helpline (1800 936 725) and Extern’s call-back line both take calls about a loved one’s gambling, and Gamblers Anonymous Ireland lists Gam-Anon meetings for relatives.
How this site handles it
Every page here carries an 18+ notice and the two Irish helplines. We describe an offer as free only when it asks for none of your own money, we show the stake a bonus demands before it can be withdrawn, and we do not tailor offers to individual readers. None of that makes gambling safer. It only makes the cost visible before you start.
Sources
Official pages, read on 25 September 2026: