# Ireland number plate: Standard 2013

> The Ireland standard 2013 number plate: format 999-LL-9999, documented since 2013, car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle, cited to Revenue Commissioners.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland/standard-2013 · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [Ireland license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland) (7 registration series).

![Ireland license plate, Standard 2013 (documented since 2013)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/ie/ie-standard-2013/ireland-license-plate-standard-2013.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `999-LL-9999` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | ~2013 → today (documented from 2013; the format is likely older) |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle |
| Plate size | 520 × 110 mm |
| Other sizes | 340 × 220 mm: Diagram No. 4 — the two-line plate, para. 17(a) |
| Colours | background #FFFFFF; characters #000000; band #003399 on the left; border #000000 |
| Rear plate differs from the front | no |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `ie-standard-2013` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland/standard-2013) |

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 and 4; sealed 20-12-2012; notice published in Iris Oifigiúil of 01-01-2013.](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 YY1 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 at the top, and the EU flag with IRL on the left.](https://www.revenue.ie/en/vrt/vehicle-registration-tax/registration-plates-and-format-standards.aspx)

## 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".

## Other standard plates here

- [Standard 1991](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland/standard-1991) (documented since 1991)
- [Standard 1987](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland/standard-1987) (1987 to 1990)
- [Index mark pre-1987](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/ireland/index-mark-pre1987) (1921 to 1987)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/ie/ie-standard-2013.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/ireland?series=ie-standard-2013
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/ie` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "ie-standard-2013"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb