Vehicle Registration Plates of Ireland

Vehicle Registration Plates Of Ireland

Registration marks on number plates in Ireland issued since 1987 have the format YY-CC-SSSSSS where the components are:

• YY — a 2-digit year (e.g. 87 for 1987; 05 for 2005), from 2013: a 3-digit year (e.g. 131 for January–June 2013; 132 for July–December 2013)
• CC — a 1- or 2-character county identifier (e.g. D for Dublin; SO for Sligo).
• SSSSSS — a 1- to 6-digit sequence number, starting with the first vehicle registered in the county that year.

Since 1991, the design of the standard Irish number plate has been based on European standard guidelines, with a blue band to the left of the plate containing the 12 stars of the European flag and the country identifier IRL. The rest of the plate has a white background with black characters. The current regulations are set out in the Vehicle Registration and Taxation (Amendment) Regulations, 1999 (S.I. No. 432 of 1999) and prescribe the format, dimensions and technical specifications of registration plates to be displayed on vehicles. They substitute the First Schedule of the Vehicle Registration and Taxation Regulations, 1992 (S.I. No. 318 of 1992) to allow additional characters to be displayed on the registration plate and to ensure that these are displayed in the correct position and proportion. The changes were necessary to cater for increases in the number of car registrations. Unlike legal requirements in most other European countries, a standard uniform character font is not required. The rules simply require legible black sans serif characters, no more than 70 mm high and 36 mm wide with a stroke width of 10 mm, on a white reflective background. The result is that a large variety of perfectly legal font styles may be seen, on either pressed aluminium or acrylic plates, both of which are allowed. Despite the rather relaxed lack of a specified font, the hyphen between the lettering must lie between the minimum dimensions of 13mm x 10mm or the maximum dimension of 22mm x 10mm. Also required on vehicles registered after the effective date of S.I. No. 432 of 1999 is the full Irish language name of the county which must be positioned above the identifier . Vehicle owners may be fined if the plate's format does not meet the requirements and will most certainly automatically fail government vehicle testing NCT which the vehicle is required to undergo on a two-yearly basis.

A vehicle's number plate is determined when it is first registered, the county code being taken from the first owner's postal address. Registration remains fixed on the one vehicle until it is de-registered (exported, destroyed, etc.), and cannot be transferred to other vehicles.