Ireland number plate: Standard 2013
Issued today Documented since 2013. Standard plates for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle, issued by Revenue Commissioners. One of 7 Ireland number plates.
Format, years and the law
- Format
-
999-LL-9999(L is any letter, 9 any digit)The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.
- Years issued
- Documented since 2013; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.
- Vehicle class
- Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle.
- Colours
-
Characters
#000000Background#FFFFFF - Size
-
520 × 110 mm · every country's size
-
Standard 2013 340×220 mm
standard · 340 × 220 mm
-
- About this plate
- THE ONE OPEN QUESTION IS THE LETTER T: Tipperary merged its two ridings in 2014 and the single mark T is prescribed by the TRADE-LICENCE table (S.I. 328/2013, S.I. 243/2014), but a TITLE-LEVEL sweep of the Irish Statute Book's annual S.I. indexes for every year from 1990 to 2025, followed by reading each of the eleven instruments so found whose title touched vehicle registration, produced NO amendment adding T (or merging LK into L, or WD into W) in the Table to paragraph 4 of the First Schedule, which is the table Reg. 9(1A)(c) actually points at. The sweep was by TITLE, not by full text, so an amendment hidden in a differently-named instrument would have been missed, the negative is strong but not exhaustive, and it is graded that way.
- How numbers are issued
- Sequential per index mark PER HALF-YEAR, restarting at 1 each time the year group changes, which is exactly why the year group is a hard age signal and Ireland is the easiest plate in Europe to date. The sequence also makes the number a rough within-county volume signal, since "121-D-90000" and "121-LD-300" are the same six months in two counties of very different size.
- About the format
- The four digits in the pattern's last group are REPRESENTATIVE ONLY. No instrument fixes the width of the sequence number: Reg. 9(3) says only that numbers "shall be assigned sequentially to each index mark, but the Commissioners may omit any numbers from a sequence".
Legal basis and sources
- S.I. No. 542 of 2012: art. 2 'These Regulations come into operation on 1 January 2013'; art. 4(b) inserting Reg. 9(1A) with the half-year numerals verbatim; art. 5(b) inserting First Schedule para. 2A with Diagrams 3... https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2012/si/542/made/en/print
- S.I. No. 318 of 1992: Reg. 9(3) sequential assignment; First Schedule paras. 3-22 (the plate spec this series inherits); para. 4 Table (index marks and placenames). https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1992/si/318/made/en/print
- S.I. No. 432 of 1999: substitutes the First Schedule, character width range 36-50 mm, hyphen length range 13-22 mm. https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1999/si/432/made/en/print
- S.I. No. 268 of 2025: art. 5(e) substituting para. 14 with the 65-70 mm / 9-10 mm / 33-50 mm ranges; art. 5(g) the 40-45 mm band. https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2025/si/268/made/en/print
- Revenue (the issuing authority): 'The format YY[1 or 2] - County - sequential number will apply to all vehicles registered since 1 January 2013'; the plate must carry black on white reflective, the Irish county name... https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/vehicle-registration-tax/registration-plates-and-format-standards.aspx
This plate in your app
The series id is ie-standard-2013. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of Ireland's series:
curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/ie \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \ | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "ie-standard-2013")'
- Plate image (SVG, sample serial): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/ie/ie-standard-2013.svg
- Blank template, filled on your side: https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/ie/ie-standard-2013/template.svg