Irish car registration plates - who hates or loves them?

TheDriver

There's certain county pairs which limit sales eg KY reg cars in Cork are unpopular with folk preferring to buy any county but KY. UK imports helped as you could register to any county.

Personally, I hate the split year since we moved into 2s

CiniO

I think Irish number plates are way too long with too many characters.

I see plenty of posters here advocating the system saying they are easy to remember. Well - yes - year might be relatively easy to remember as that's the first thing you see. Then county is probably even easier to remember, as lots of people would just associate it with the area they know/been to/etc. But then when it comes to following consecutive number, then it's probably one of the most difficult thing to remember.

Also - I don't really think there's that many occasions you'd need to remember the number plate.

In case of emergency (f.e. after hit and run) most important is actually being able to read the reg number of the car running away than remembering it.

Once you read that, you can quickly put it into your phone as voice note, etc...

And problem here is, that reading Irish number plates is hard. They are long, consist of plenty of characters, so font is pretty small, and Irish county name on the top make font size even smaller.

Believe me - it's much easier to read UK plate consisting of just 7 large characters occupying whole plate (i.e. SM66POE), then Irish small font 11 character 162-KE-124834 from car running away.

whisky_galore

Hate the year system, just encourages conspicuous consumption and keeping up with the Joneses behaviour.

Pointless that the format isn't enforced, people getting tiny plates, faux German plates, yellow plates, a free for all.

The ridiculous amount of digits for classics, like bar code lengths.

The county tribal rivalry thing on plates is puerile.

Juran

Saw my first 222 reg today.

I'd love to know what our european neighbors and the british think of the Irish car reg system.

I know the UK stuck in the year if you register the car the first 6 months eg. For 2022, it would read BA22CSN, then after July, it would read BA72CSN. The 72 is code for 2022.

I remember when they brought that out around 10 years ago, the purpose to generate sales in January, as UK new car sales occured around August. I know you can figure out the year, but i like thr way its not obvious and in a way hidden within the letters.

I like them, though not so keen on the extra digit for year. Here in the North we use the first letter to represent year and the next 2 letters to represent county. However the first letter isn't constant per year through all counties, if you see what I mean. For example, both IB (old) and XZ (new) represent County Armagh. So MIB is County Armagh in the late 80s / early 90s (exact year escapes me) and MXZ is County Armagh 2018. So if you know the numbering / lettering system per County you know the year. Your system is so much easier. Not being able to re-register if you want I find strange though.

VikingG

The beauty of the system is that it is simple - like all good design.

Juran

Anyone finding the car reg numbers since 2020 seem to all look the same ?

231-D, 221-D, 211-D, 232-D, 222-D, 212-D, 201-D

I wish they'd just change it to a random numbering system.

spuddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119330736#Comment_119330736

And our system would be even simpler without the year, better for the average punter's wallet too.

Miscreant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120858248#Comment_120858248

They look different to me.

JohnC.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120859796#Comment_120859796

No, the year will still be a factor even without it being on the plate. They don't have the year, but I see UK people talking about "[x]-plate" cars all the time.

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058253514/irish-car-registration-plates-who-hates-or-loves-them

Northern Ireland plates?

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058253514/irish-car-registration-plates-who-hates-or-loves-them

What I really hate is ads for new cars where the tell you to drive an Audi 231 or whatever. I want a car, not a plate

blackbox

I don't get emotional about it.

It should be possible to re-register a car in the county of residence. There’s no logic to having it locked to where it was originally purchased and it can deflate resale values, particularly in the cities or where there’s a GAA rivalry etc

Also some of the sequences are too long, particularly in Dublin but occasionally Cork etc too.

You could neaten it up by replacing the sequence number with letters

242-C-ABC gives you potentially 17,576 combinations of letters.

if you add numbers, and exclude 0 and I because of 0 vs O and 1 vs I you can get 39,304

so 242-D-X1Q might cover the entire year. You’d be able to stick within certainly 4 chars.

Low volume counties might get away with

242-LM-P3 …

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119307863#Comment_119307863

Single letters were for cities, and two for counties. Some, like Galway and cork, just kept the one letter for the county. Waterford has/had W for the city and WD for the county.

hoodie6029

Considering we only have a few thousand motorbikes, they should have a much short reg. Do away with the tiny font that they have to use to fit it on the plate for them. Ditto, the display of tax requirement for them.

User1998

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120860122#Comment_120860122

If motorbikes fitted the correct size plate than it wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is lots of people purposely fit tiny illegal plates and purposely cover the numbers with their tax disc

Larbre34

The technology exists such that cars do not need registration plates anymore.

I'd put forward the following as a good case for why they should be done away with, certainly of the huge size we have in Ireland anyway.

hoodie6029

If they could all be identified with a 5 or 6 character plate there’d be no ‘excuse’ for the smaller plate. The tax is minuscule on the anyway, they are hardly worth the effort of the administration of it.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119306174#Comment_119306174

Id much rather no number plate on the front.

Why do we need front number plates when a lot of cars are not designed for them?

Completely ruins the look of many cars.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119314963#Comment_119314963

Nothing to do with lower population, 5 of the 6 counties are populous and Fermanagh had to get an additional IG reg after the allocation of numbers. The reason why NI is still able to use the system is because they used 3 letters and 4 digits instead of 3 letters and 3 digits as in the 26 counties and Britain. They will shortly be introducing 4 digits and 3 letters which will do for much longer than NI is likely to exist.

Wompa1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120860191#Comment_120860191

Handy for the mobile speed cameras

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120860518#Comment_120860518

That's all they're good for.

spuddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120859931#Comment_120859931

...because the UK does have the year on their plates.

The year would continue be a factor, but the car's condition and mileage would be the major considerations.

We also don't have a car industry, so incentivising people to spend on car, what is most people's second largest purchase, isn't great for the country either.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861412#Comment_120861412

You could argue that VRT of 30+% was a real lucrative home grown industry but now that vrt rates on EVs is negligible that excuse no longer holds

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120860191#Comment_120860191

whose fault is it that the car is not designed for a front number plate?

your question is the wrong way around.

R.O.R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861665#Comment_120861665

Don't forget VAT as well - almost 24% of the retail price of a new EV goes directly to the Irish Government. The rest of it doesn't go to the manufacturer, it goes to the importer and they pay the manufacturer whatever it cost. Haven't a clue what importers make on each unit, but it must be a decent margin.

GSBellew

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861412#Comment_120861412

They do have the year on them it's not maybe as outwardly obvious, (it's actually pretty obvious) but anyone living there would know it.

They are on XX23 XXX now . . . . from September it will be XX73 XXX

March 2024 it'll be XX24 XXX September 2024 XX74 XXX and so on

The 6 months from March to end August every year it's plainly obvious with area year and three random letter.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120862724#Comment_120862724

Oh I know I was just highlighting VRT as its an exceptional sales tax levied on private cars which is why it's so egregious😩

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120860175#Comment_120860175

Involved in an accident with a car that just fcuked off? Oh my fault that I didn't have the tech to identify it in my arse pocket at the time.

steinbock123

We could still be on the old system if they had continued to use four numbers after the prefix, like they continue to do in the north. As in 1969 my dad got a new car , I think it was DZU 479. This sequence would change when they got to DZU 999 to EZU 1, up to 999.So they only got 999 cars registered before the prefix changed, instead of 9999. As in , for example , if they had issued up to DZU 9999. So for the whole sequence of ZU registration numbers, instead of 26 X 999 (25974), they could have had 26 X 9999, which would have made 259974 registration numbers, if my maths are correct. Just fo ZU’s alone. I reckon we could still be using this system if it had been adopted.

Now don’t get me started on those f$[¥\!?§ ZV plates for classics . . . . .

Wompa1

I like the plates well enough. I do think it is much simpler to understand than most other countries. I live in the US for a long time, their plates are shite and the custom plates are tacky af. Of course, they also even let you change the design of the background of the plates themselves too if you pay the DMV extra for it...another fun American micro-economy upsell.

For our plates, I would make some changes to the county list to make them a bit more consistent. Personally, I would rather they go back to the way things were and remove the 231 and 232 shite. Might be nice if IRL is in the tri colour. I see some countries like Belgium have the lettering in a colour other than white so I assume it is allowed.

spuddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861665#Comment_120861665

Two wrongs don't make a right.

It's even worse when you think about, the government incentivises people to buy new cars (with all that money flowing out of the country), and then charges a large tax on top of it.

brokenbad

Used to love the old "IR" plates from the 70's and 80's.

Its a gimmick now with the "231" and "232" plates

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120863897#Comment_120863897

Fairly sure the department had already switched the order around (for some counties at least) when they ran out of numbers. I remember pre-87 Meath plates with AI at the start and much older ones with AI at the end.

Open to correction on this. There used to be a very knowledgeable poster who knew the old system inside out but he seems to be long gone - @carchaeologist

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120868746#Comment_120868746

As I recall, Clare would have been the first to run out of numbers in 1986.

gipi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120868746#Comment_120868746

You're right re the Meath regs. Many counties switched letters and numbers, and a lot were running out of registration numbers (especially Dublin) by 1986. That led to the new year system.

Juran

Ireland is too small to have county specific reg plates, like the US has reg plates for each state.

As alresdy posted, some people in this country will not buy a certain 2nd hand car cause the plate has Limerick, or Cork, or Mayo.

France changed their district ( like our counties) plate system to a national plate system around 15 - 20 years ago. Before, If you lived in Paris you had to carry a 75 reg plate, if you moved to Lyon, you had to apply for a Lyon plate, and de-register your Paris plate. Huge admin work. Now your reg is a randon number, however on the side of the plate under the FR, you can by choice add your district number. This little number, say 75, 66, 22, 29, etc.. is not part of the reg number. Its like putting a little Cork sticker at the side of your reg, if you want. If you sell your car, the next person can change that little district number without going near the registration office.

I think its a good system.

Germany they still have chage plates everytime they move to a new area. It falls under the local town hall.

So if you moved from Cork city to say Mallow, you have to de-register from Cork city town hall, and register with Mallow town hall, who will take back your old Cork plates, and hand you new Mallow plates. Madness. Must keep a few million public servants in a job !

spuddy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120871030#Comment_120871030

Agree it's a good system. The format is sequential rather than random, it started with AA-001-AA and went from there. Italy, Portugal, and Slovakia (since the start of this year) follow a similar system. Perhaps this format will be adopted EU-wide one day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Italy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Portugal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Slovakia

bmc58

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119305134#Comment_119305134

201 is registered new between Jan to June of that year.202 is registered new between Jul to Dec of that year.What's confusing about that?

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120866061#Comment_120866061

IR was Offaly. Go figure.

It was a ridiculous system lacking in any intuition.

Current one is far superior, although I would drop the 191 / 192 bit and revert back to just two digits for the year. Bloody Healy-Raes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland#Pre-1987_mark_codes

With ubiquitous access to modern technology, a reg just needs to be a database key that’s easy to remember.

I think our plates are over complicated and over structured.

The year is just about the car industry promoting age snobbery to drive sales and the county by county regs seem to be just GAA shirt mentality.

It was the same oddly detailed local coding with landline phone numbers, I appreciate the tech changed and they used to use the codes to route things, but did we ever really need more than 60 area codes for 2.4 million users?! Back in the day, hardly anyone even had a phone, yet they came up with this ludicrously elaborate coding system probably for less than a million users that’s so complicated it could have covered the whole of North America.

We’ve 5.6 million mobile numbers on just 08X and nobody cares. It just works.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120871522#Comment_120871522

We could drop it down to just 2 numbers and still support up to 29.85 million possible number plates*. Pretty easy to remember AA-00-AA

*Assuming we remove I and Q from letters, and 0 from the first number.

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120863897#Comment_120863897

Well, not quite the numbers you're quoting as Q and Z weren't used in the 3 letter sequence in a lot of counties, Q not at all and Z in some, ZZP was issued in Donegal but ZMI wasn't issued in Wexford. In saying that I agree with you completely that we should have used the 4 number system.

Core6

Putting the year as the first two (or three) digits was 'driven' by SIMI. It made us all much more conscious of the year of the car's registration, hence pushing us all into buying new cars.

The three digit year was introduced because SIMI dealers couldn't handle the complete nightmare of the full year's sales all happening in the first two or three months. Nobody registered a new car from April onwards. Now they have two peaks.

The UK has a peak in Jan, Feb when a buyer can say that their car is a 2023 model. Then in March the new age identifier number starts ('23' for 2023) and it changes again in September ('73' for Sept - Feb '24). That means they have three sales peaks in a calendar year.

It also means that the age of the car is (slightly) obscured.

Of course, they have private plates too. I agree that some of these can be tacky but others are used to make the age of the car very obscure (unless the observer is very knowledgeable about the model production start to finish and the various visual upgrades during its production run).

Of course, the DVLA in the UK make money by selling the registrations and switching them from one car to the next for the owners.

Ireland could easily introduce that too and make a few Euro.

Regs starting with VIP would be very popular but RIP not so much (unless it is for an undertaker's hearse).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120875353#Comment_120875353

I agree with that. I think what we have is ludicrously cumbersome for what it actually is - an identifier for cars. The aim should be to keep the numbers short, not some long and unwieldy code with information that's not much use to anyone.

I mean, seriously why do we need to know where a car was first registered? It's superfluous information that's totally irrelevant. The year of registration could also be looked up in 2 seconds if you've any business actually knowing that e.g. buying a car. It's no longer challenging at all to have a database check.

The 3 digit year code is simply shame / snob marketing tactic that's been somehow dressed up as 'ease of memorability'.

breezy1985

We can blame the car sales lobbyists all we want but for their plan to work it involves people being absolute losers and being pathetic enough to care what other people think about them based on how old their car is.

It's not the layout of numbers on a bit of metal thats the problem at all. It's the totally moronic mentality of far too many humans.

Glaceon

I used to be a fan of it in its original form. But then they brought in the whole 3-digit year thing; whether it was triskaidekaphobia, pressure to balance out sales or both I don't really care but it ruined the legibility of the plate which was the biggest benefit of the system. I also think they ruined it more by bringing in the thing of imports having stupidly high numbers.

Well, it’s up to the government not to be lobbied by industries to create a system they exploits human psychology for marketing purposes.

StudentDad

I'll have mine with Wingdings please Dave.