Sir, – Of all the idiosyncrasies of life in Ireland, few irritate me more than the legislation, administration and enforcement surrounding vehicle number plates.
We seem rather proud of our supposedly simple system: year, county and sequential number. Yet I would argue that it is deficient in two particularly Irish ways.
As discussed on these pages recently, there is simply no need for the year to appear on number plates – not even as a numerical code. A random seven-character registration would suffice and would make eyewitness identification more useful than a year-based system.
If people want to display their county identity, a separate space for a county or regional emblem, as used in Italy, would accommodate this. If electric vehicles are to receive special privileges, a clearly identifiable green plate, as used in Hungary, would be preferable to our optional green stripe.
RM Block
More fundamentally, we need to regulate and standardise the plates. Legislation specifies dimensions but, remarkably, allows considerable variation in fonts, materials and security features. The result is a huge variety of plates, alongside many that do not even comply with our relatively weak regulations.
There is also an obvious vulnerability to cloning: no proof of ownership is required to obtain a plate. Someone can simply note the registration of a similar car and order plates bearing that number. It is illegal, but remarkably easy.
Ireland is also missing a potential source of revenue. Reforming the registration system could remove years and counties, making a vehicle’s age less conspicuous and ending the absurdity whereby otherwise identical cars can be worth different amounts because of their registration. It could also create a properly regulated market for personalised registrations.
We could have a simpler, more secure and revenue-generating system. Instead, we have managed to make number plates unnecessarily complicated while barely regulating the plates themselves. – Yours, etc,
JOE LANGAN,
Ashbourne,
Co Meath.
