On Sam Smyth show on Today FM on Sunday Eamon Ryan mentioned a motion at the Green Party conference to drop the year from number plates to reduce new car sales. This is not as crazy as it seems. Pidge on P.ie came up with this graph.

It is quiet obvious why this happens. A 08 car seems newer then a 07 and everyone likes something new. Also newer cars have a better resale value so indeed people want to keep them. So the idea that taking the year off the reg is not as far fetched as it would seem. Maybe it would just result in a spread of car sales throughout the year but maybe some decrease would be evident.

On the other side of the coin. Irish Number plates are easy to remember. Far easier to remember that the car was a 08 Dublin car then N7TY 69R or what ever other countries have. So would the decrease in car recognition for police purposes outweigh the climate change aspects?

I don’t know it is certainly a interesting purposal that requires some thaught.