Irish plate may be what the doctor ordered !

[Peter Milnes]

Perhaps you could explain, please, why "Z" plates are meant to be yellow background at the front and red background at the rear, whereas "I" plates are White front and Yellow rear as rest of UK. Your car may well have been registered in Eire even though sold in Northern Ireland, as convenient for the dealer, or may even have been imported from a dealer in Eire with dealer's pre-registration, just as in UK (but between counties). Incidentally all "Z" plates are administered from Eire and "I" plates from DVLA. The split originates from the partition.

All the best, Peter

[Simon J]

Peter,

My TCZ registration is on a brand new car and is a Belfast registration - CZ is Belfast! The Z in a registration number only signifies that the car is registered in either Ireland or Northern ireland and it depends on the full combination of letters as to which county and therefore which jurusdiction it comes from. The web site I posted yesterday will give you the full listing if you are interested and you will see that partition had nothing to do with the initial I and Z allocation - it was already done in 1904 I believe.

So not all Z plates are administered from Ireland (not Eire, please!), and we have our own Driver and Vehicle Licensing department in Northern Ireland and don't use DVLA in Swansea.

In NI we use the white front/yellow rear plate combination as in the rest of the UK and in Ireland up until they adopted the 'Euro' plate I think they used white front/red rear plates but it may well have been yellow front ones. To be honest I can't recall. Maybe some of our Irish readers will know.

It wont affect your insurance premium one bit but just make sure that you dont forget to tell them of the changes!!!!

does anyone know of a good web site to by these sort of plates?

cheers

[Simon J]

And to conclude this one, I have checked with Irish friends and they say that they never used yellow front plates. They switched from white letters/numbers on a black background to black letters/numbers on a white background for front plates and a red background for rear ones in the late 60s early 70s, and then to the current 'Euro' plates in 1987.

But regardless, Northern Irish plates can be transferred to the rest of the UK, but Irish ones can't!

[crumpit1]

Can you let us know how the purchase/transfer/legality etc has worked out by now ?
Cheers