SIMI Number plate changes

The motor industry plans to lobby the government to change the registration system for new cars to avoid the concentration of sales in January each year. Industry figures believe that a new number plate system would help to spread business over the full year and boost ailing dealerships.

‘‘We need to look at the January mania around registration plates,” said Eddie Murphy, managing director of Ford Ireland. ‘‘It affects the sustainability of dealerships when so much business is spiked into the start of the year.”

Murphy said that the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) would be pushing for changes to the current system, which has been in place since 1987.

‘‘There is no reason why we shouldn’t look at it as an option to give a more even spread of sales and stimulate the market,” he said.

He said that one option was to include the month of registration on the number plate – for example, 1001 could signify January 2010.

As a result, there would not be a large variation in price between a vehicle registered in December and one registered the next month.

Another possible change would be to allow buyers of second-hand cars to reregister the vehicles and change the county details on the number plate, according to Murphy. He said he believed there was support for a change, but it could pose a challenge for gardaí.

The government introduced a scrappage scheme in last month’s budget, but Murphy said further measures were needed to help the sector after ‘‘an absolutely horrible year’’ in 2009.

The number of new vehicles registered fell by 62 per cent to 57,460, compared with 151,607 in 2008. ‘‘You have to go back to 1987 to find a number as low as last year’s,” said Murphy.

While some reports last week suggested that car sales were brisk in the opening days of this year, Murphy said that he ‘‘wouldn’t be that optimistic’’.

He expects sales of between 70,000 and 75,000 vehicles this year, including 10,000 sales through the scrappage scheme.

Murphy said that the banks should do more to help dealerships. ‘‘The dealers who went out of business last year did so because they ran out of money,” he said. ‘‘No one is expecting a blank cheque, but we would like to see the banks doing more in the working capital area.”