Since 2013, Ireland has had a split registration system for new cars. From January to the end of June, newly registered cars are given a three-digit identifier, which is the last two digits of the year of registration and a ‘1’ signifying that the car was registered in the first half of the year. Hence 241, 251, 261 and so on.
From July to the end of December, simply enough, the last digit changes to a ‘2’ signifying that the car was registered in the second half of the year — 242, 252 etcetera.
Why do we have this system? And has it worked in the way it was supposed to?
A bit of history might be helpful here. Way back in the mists of time (or 1921 to be exact) Ireland’s numberplates consisted of a two-letter county code, followed by numbers which were the car’s registration number.
Simple enough? Not really — none of the county codes made much sense to the uninitiated. Dublin was ZI, for instance, while Kildare was ZW. In the 1970s, this became even more confusing them the letter Z was added to expand the number of available registrations as car sales grew. Which is how we ended up with those old black-on-red FZV number plates. You can still find the vestiges of this old registration system in Northern Ireland.
In 1987, the government decided that a simpler, easier-to-understand layout in which the car’s numberplate would be made up of a two-digit year identifier, plus a one or two letter county code, plus a multi-digit number which was the sequence in which that car was registered in that county in that year.
Hence 87-C-1234 would have been the 1,234th car registered in County Cork in 1987. At a swoop, Ireland gained a vehicle registration system that was one of the simplest and easiest to understand anywhere in the world, provided you knew enough Irish county names to be able to work out the letter designation (although, helpfully, the county name was also spelled out in Irish in smaller letters at the top of the ‘plate).
However, there was a problem baked into the system. Clearly, whenever a new numberplate is introduced, there will be a scramble amongst keen car buyers to get their new car, with its shiny new plate, as early as possible. It’s why the UK switched to a twice-yearly numberplate change, as its August changeover meant too many sales were clustering into too tight a timeline each year.
In Ireland, if anything, the situation was worse. With the popularity of the new plate each year, new car sales where clustering in January, February and March, after which sales would pretty much fall off a cliff, and dealers would be left twiddling their fingers until orders started coming in again in the run up to Christmas.
Coming up to 2013, things started to change. There was a lot of talk in the media at the time that a new numberplate layout would be needed that year so that people weren’t buying a car with an unlucky number on its nose, but that was really just silly-season stuff. In fact, the motor trade in Ireland had been lobbying the government for some time to change the way new registrations were issued, so as to spread out sales more evenly throughout the year.
In theory, the best way to do this would be the follow the model of Monaco, whereby it’s the person who gets the registration plate, and keeps it with them when they change their cars. However that would have meant an entirely new registration system would have been needed, and it was felt that on the basis of ease-of-use for both consumers and the Gardaí, the old system would be retained but with the addition of the ‘1’ and ‘2’ to signify January and July registrations. (At the time, it was pointed out that cars would still have the number 13 on their plates, just with the addition of a 1 or 2 as well, but no-one seemed bothered by this).
So, has the change worked? Let’s look at the numbers…
In the two years preceding 2013, only around 4,000 new cars were registered in July. In 2013, that jumped to 11,600. In 2014, it rocketed to 18,711, and in 2015 it was 27,564. Since when, with some fluctuations, July registrations have more or less held up. In July 2025, 26,738 new cars were registered. So yes, in that sense, the move has been a success. July sales have dramatically expanded.
January remains the primary month for registrations, however. In January 2025, more than 33,000 new cars were registered, but there is a penalty to pay in some ways. After all, that boost in July registrations isn’t made up of entirely new customers — it’s made up of people who have moved their purchasing from February, March, April, May, June, August and September. So those months have, since the changeover in 2013, tended to see lower registrations — especially February and March — than was previously the case. The later months of the year, especially November and December, haven’t changed that much at all in terms of registrations; both months tend to see fewer than 300 new cars registered.
So, in one sense, the move has been a failure, because registrations are no more spread out through the year. Instead, they are reorganised into two distinct peaks. For now, the Irish motor trade seems happy enough with that. At least it allows work to be a little more spread out, and it certainly allows car makers a second bite at the cherry when it comes to launching a new model into the Irish market. Previously, if a new car didn’t arrive in time for the January-to-March sales rush, it was essentially dead in the water, in sales terms, until the following January, by which time any publicity efforts might have faded.
Arguably, it would be better to have a system which, Monaco-style, eliminates the seasonality of the market entirely, but then that would also remove a key sales tool for car dealers — that sense of excitement building up ahead of the new plate’s arrival. Possibly, then, the current system is the best that we can have — sales are less concentrated in one particular part of the year, the numberplate itself remains simple and easily understood, and everyone gets two chances each year to have the latest plate.