A New Irish Market

Open for Business

New rules. New licences. New shops. Ireland licenses its first betting premises under the modern regime this December — and we take you from application to a full floor of trading terminals, with an app to match.

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Why now

Open now The GRAI portal is accepting betting licence applications today
1 Dec 2026 Ireland's first modern betting premises licences take effect
3 licence types In-person, remote and remote intermediary — we'll scope the right one

What Changed

The rules changed. So did the opportunity.

For almost a century, retail betting in Ireland ran on the Betting Act 1931: a bookmaker's licence issued by Revenue and a Certificate of Personal Fitness from An Garda Síochána. That framework is being replaced. The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland now licenses betting, gaming and lotteries under one statutory regime — the first purpose-built one this market has ever had.

For established operators that means a re-registration. For anyone who has been waiting for a clear route into Ireland, it is the most clearly defined opening in decades. The bar is higher either way: exclusion, advertising, safer gambling and Social Impact Fund obligations have to be evidenced in your systems on demand, and sanctions reach €20 million or 10% of turnover. Build that in from day one and it stops being a risk — it becomes the reason customers pick you.

What the regime asks of an operator

A licence application backed by statutory legal notice, personal fitness and source-of-funds evidence
Controls that demonstrate compliance continuously, with a retrievable audit trail
Technical enforcement of exclusion, age and advertising rules at the point of play
Named accountability for AML, safer gambling and advertising within the business

Where We Come In

Everything between the idea and the open door

Compliance Consultancy

We put the application together, build the controls behind it and stay with you through the first inspection — advice from people who have actually run regulated betting platforms.

What's Included

Self-Service Shop Build-Out

A shop that opens on time and trades from day one: terminals, cash handling, age verification, self-exclusion tooling and every screen inside and outside the window.

See the Build-Out

Mobile App

An app your players actually enjoy using, with KYC, AML, cash and card funding and safer gambling controls already built in rather than bolted on.

Explore the App

Self-service betting terminals, race screens and a cash machine inside a staffless BetXS shop

Proven in the Field

We didn't design this in theory. We already run it.

BetXS runs staffless betting shops in Kilbeggan and Ballivor. Doveshield provides the hardware and software behind them — the terminals customers bet on, the age verification at the screen, the self-exclusion network, and the remote control of everything from shutters and lights to CCTV and the in-shop displays.

So when this page describes a shop that trades without staff on the floor, that is not a roadmap. It is a shop you can walk into today.

2

Shops trading

Kilbeggan and Ballivor — both operated remotely.

35–40%

Of a manned shop's cost base

As reported to SBC News in 2021, against fixed costs that exceed €200,000 for a traditional Irish shop.

100%

Self-service betting

Every bet placed and settled at the terminal, with cash in and cash out on site.

Under-25

Biometric age challenge

High-resolution cameras prompt verification for anyone who appears under 25.

Cross-network self-exclusion is already live across the estate: a customer can self-exclude from their phone and be excluded at every shop on the platform, without ever filling in a form at a counter.

Betting operator

As featured in

May 2021

Compliance workshop session with an operator team

Gambling & Betting Compliance

The hard part, handled — so you can get on with trading.

Licensing is where most good ideas stall. We sit alongside your team from the first scoping call to the first inspection, and what you get back is not a report that sits in a drawer: it is a live application in the GRAI portal, a control framework your staff can actually operate, and the evidence to stand behind both.

Licensing Strategy & Applications

Scoping the right licence type — in-person betting, remote betting, or remote betting intermediary — then preparing the application, statutory legal notice, personal fitness and source-of-funds documentation.

Readiness & Gap Analysis

A structured review of your current operation against the obligations in the Act, scored and prioritised, so remediation work is sequenced against your licence date.

AML & Counter-Terrorist Financing

Business risk assessment, customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence tiers, PEP and sanctions screening, transaction monitoring thresholds, and a suspicious transaction reporting workflow under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, as amended.

Safer Gambling & Harm Prevention

Player protection policy, staff intervention procedures, marketing and inducement controls, and the operating model for exclusion handling across both retail and online channels.

Advertising & Sponsorship Review

Reviewing campaigns, shopfront media and digital marketing against the statutory watershed, the restrictions on social media targeting, and the rules on inducements.

Inspection & Audit Readiness

Registers, board reporting packs, evidence libraries and rehearsal sessions so an inspection is a retrieval exercise rather than a scramble.

Doveshield provides regulatory and operational consultancy. We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice; we work with your legal advisers, and can introduce you to specialist gambling counsel where an application calls for it.

Self-service betting terminal in a retail shop

Self-Service Betting Shops

A licensed shop, fitted out and trading — not a box of hardware.

We build self-service betting shops end to end — starting at the licence application and finishing with trained staff on a floor that is already passing its own compliance checks. Every device reports into one estate view, so a fault, a cash-low warning or an excluded-customer event finds the right person instead of waiting to be noticed.

And because we make the terminals and write the payment layer ourselves, the rules live inside the transaction rather than in a binder behind the counter.

What we provision

Self-Service Betting Terminals

SentinelKiosk terminals for sports, lotto and virtuals, in floor-standing, wall-mounted and countertop cabinets. Large-format, high-contrast interfaces migrate over-the-counter customers without staff hand-holding.

SentinelKiosk

Cash Handling

SentinelPay note and coin acceptance, recycling and dispensing, ticket issuance and redemption, with guided replenishment, balancing and reconciliation reports at end of shift.

SentinelPay

Age Verification

SentinelRecognition age estimation at the terminal, with escalation to document scan and staff override. Challenge events are logged with the outcome, giving you the evidence trail an inspection asks for.

SentinelRecognition

Self-Exclusion Tooling

Enrolment and enforcement across the estate, designed to operate against the National Gambling Exclusion Register alongside your own local scheme. An excluded customer is blocked at the terminal, not just flagged in a back office report.

In-Shop Display Screens

Live prices, results, race and match schedules and streaming, driven from the same feed as your terminals. Mandatory safer gambling messaging is scheduled into the playlist rather than left to whoever is on shift.

External Advertising Screens

Shopfront and window displays with day-parting, so creative that falls under the statutory advertising watershed simply cannot play outside its permitted hours. Scheduling decisions are logged and exportable.

Delivery

From licence application to open doors

Licence & Scope

Licence type selection, application preparation and submission through the GRAI operator portal, alongside the commercial and site plan for the estate.

Site & Fit-Out Design

Floor layout, terminal placement, cash routing, screen positions and network design — reviewed against accessibility and supervision requirements.

Hardware Provisioning

Terminals, cash devices, verification hardware and displays specified, sourced, staged and factory-configured before they reach the shop.

Integration & Compliance Testing

Backend integration, end-to-end transaction testing, and a documented run through exclusion, age, advertising and AML scenarios.

Go-Live & Support

Staff training, opening-day cover, then monitored operation with alerting, spares and a maintenance schedule.

Mobile

One app your players enjoy, and your regulator can audit.

Most operators bolt an app together from a platform, a KYC vendor, a payments provider and a responsible gambling module — then spend a year reconciling four sets of records. We build it as one thing, so an identity decision, a deposit limit and a transaction alert all read from the same customer record. Players get an app that just works; you get an answer in minutes when someone asks for one.

Your shops are part of it too: a customer can top up with cash at a terminal and withdraw against it in the same shop, both legs on one ledger.

KYC & Identity

Document capture with liveness and face-match at sign-up
Age verification before first stake, with hard blocking under 18
PEP, sanctions and adverse media screening on onboarding and on an ongoing basis
Periodic re-verification and change-of-circumstance triggers
Full decision history retained per customer, exportable on request

AML Tooling

Customer risk scoring driving standard and enhanced due diligence tiers
Real-time transaction monitoring with configurable rules and thresholds
Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth collection workflows
Case management and suspicious transaction reporting with a locked audit trail
Reporting views built for regulator and Revenue requests

Deposits & Withdrawals

Debit card and open banking bank transfer, with credit card payments blocked by design
Cash deposit to the player account at any terminal in your estate
Cash withdrawal at terminal, by ticket or QR, with note and coin payout
Withdrawal-first design: no reversing a pending withdrawal back into play
One ledger across retail and mobile, reconciled per shift and per day

Safer Gambling Tools

Deposit, loss, stake and session-time limits, with increases held over a cooling-off period
Reality checks and session reminders at customer-set intervals
Time-out and self-exclusion, applied across mobile and retail together
Designed to operate against the National Gambling Exclusion Register
Plain-language activity statements and net position, always reachable in two taps

Compliance that runs itself

The gap that costs operators money is the one between a written control and a system that lets a member of staff wave it through on a busy Saturday. We close it by building each obligation into the transaction path itself, and logging the outcome whether it passed or failed.

Which means most inspection questions are answered with an export, not an investigation — and nobody's weekend disappears into it.

Where each obligation lives

Self-exclusion
Enforced at terminal and in-app before a stake is accepted
Age verification
Age estimation plus document escalation, every challenge logged
Advertising watershed
Day-parted screen scheduling with an exportable play log
AML monitoring
Real-time rules over a single retail and mobile ledger
Safer gambling limits
Applied at account level across both channels
Social Impact Fund
Turnover and contribution reporting from the same ledger

Why Doveshield

One partner across advice, hardware and software.

We design and manufacture the terminals, write the payment and betting software that runs on them, and advise on the regime they have to satisfy. So when the rules move, it is one conversation and one release — not a negotiation between four suppliers who each think the problem belongs to somebody else.