Methodology

Sources

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) publishes Ireland's vehicle licensing statistics as PxStat tables on data.cso.ie, read here through its JSON-stat API. Six tables are used:

• TEM20 — new private cars licensed for the first time by make and model, monthly since January 2014; the source of every model row.
• TEM28 — the same by make, model and type of fuel, monthly since January 2024; the source of the BEV and PHEV columns.
• TEM24 and TEM25 — new and second-hand private cars licensed for the first time by make, engine capacity, emission band and licensing authority, monthly since 2022; the source of the brand rows and of the used imports by CO₂ tax band.
• TEM27 — new and second-hand private cars by type of fuel and licensing authority, monthly since 2021; the source of the fuel mix.
• TEM21 — vehicles licensed for the first time by taxation class, monthly since 1998; a cross-check of the new and second-hand totals.

Tables extracted: 2026-09-12. Latest complete month: 2026-08. The site shows the latest 36 months. The CSO publishes a month only once it is complete, so nothing on these pages is provisional and there is no register snapshot behind any figure: every number here is the CSO's own.

What is counted

• New: a new private car licensed for the first time in Ireland, the CSO's "new private cars" class. Licensing follows the payment of Vehicle Registration Tax, so the counts peak in January and July, when the registration plate changes.
• Used import: a second-hand private car licensed for the first time in Ireland, i.e. a car previously registered abroad — mostly imports from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Japan. The total is new plus used.
• Models are the CSO's own make-and-model categories (about 330) and exist for new cars only. About 3–4 % of new cars fall into the CSO's "Other" category and appear in no model row, so the model table adds up to slightly less than the new-car total, and model shares are shares of the CSO's own total.
• Brands: the CSO's make tables list 36 makes and an "all other makes" residual; four brands it lists at model level only (MG, Polestar, Xpeng, Leapmotor) are summed from their model rows, and what remains of the residual is shown as "Other makes". The brand rows therefore add up to the total exactly. A listed make's total can exceed the sum of its listed models, because its models outside the CSO's categories are counted under the make but not under any model.
• The three CSO tables that carry a monthly total (models, makes, fuel) agree with each other to the car in every month shown; the taxation-class table can differ by a few cars in a month the CSO has restated, and is used as a cross-check only.

Fuel groups

Petrol, diesel, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, battery electric and other, mapped from the CSO's fuel types on both the new-car and the used-import tables. The CSO records hybrids without a plug ("petrol and electric hybrid", "diesel and electric hybrid") separately from plug-in hybrids, so Ireland has a hybrid group — but it is the fuel type as recorded at licensing, not a full-hybrid count: full hybrids and most mild hybrids sit in it together (in 2024–2026 every Suzuki Swift, Ford Puma and Renault Symbioz is a "petrol and electric hybrid", while the mild-hybrid Volkswagen Golf eTSI is petrol). SIMI's "hybrid (petrol electric)" share uses the same classification. Fuel per model is published from January 2024: the BEV and PHEV columns of the model tables are blank for earlier months.

CO₂ tax bands

CO₂ tax band as recorded at licensing (A = lowest emissions, G = highest; n/a = not recorded). The CSO publishes no CO₂ in g/km. Bands are published for used imports and new cars by make; the site shows them for used imports.

KPI definitions

Registrations

New private cars licensed for the first time in Ireland plus used cars imported and licensed for the first time in the month, from the CSO's vehicle licensing statistics.

New cars / New share

New private cars licensed for the first time in Ireland (the CSO's 'new private cars'). New share = new cars ÷ all first licensings.

Used imports / Used share

Second-hand private cars licensed for the first time in Ireland: cars previously registered abroad, mostly imports from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Japan. Used share = used imports ÷ all first licensings.

BEV share

Battery-electric share of new cars plus used imports. PHEV = plug-in hybrids; hybrids without a plug are shown separately as hybrids.

New-car BEV share

Battery-electric cars as a share of new registrations only.

Hybrid share

Hybrids without a plug as a share of new cars plus used imports: the CSO's 'petrol and electric' and 'diesel and electric hybrid' fuel types as recorded at licensing, which hold full hybrids and most mild hybrids (Ford Puma, Suzuki Swift) alike.

MoM / YoY / YTD

Change versus the previous month, versus the same month a year earlier, and the calendar-year-to-date total (with its change versus the same period a year earlier).

Checks

At ingest, every table must reproduce its own totals: the model rows plus "Other" against "All models", the fuel rows against "All fuel types", the make rows plus "All other makes" against "All makes", the band rows against "All bands", each to within two cars per month (the CSO's tables are cut separately and occasionally miss a car's fuel code); the new-car total of the model, make and fuel tables must agree, as must the used total of the make and fuel tables, and the taxation-class table must agree with both to within 0.5 %. An acceptance gate reviews the top 40 makes and models for coverage, sibling makes that should be one brand, and single-letter or otherwise suspect model names. A sanity gate rejects an export whose latest month is less than 30 % of the previous month (August is half of July every year), whose month series has a gap, or where any mart is empty for the latest month. An identity gate compares the exported new, used and total counts, the brand rows and the model rows against the CSO's totals. A fuel gate fails when more than 2 % of a month's registrations carry an unmapped fuel type. Finally, a consistency audit re-derives shares, sums, MoM, YoY and rankings from the exported JSON and fails on any mismatch.

The CSO's own monthly release, Vehicles Licensed for the First Time, reproduces from these pages to the car (August 2026: 10,924 new and 8,084 used private cars, 3,763 new electric cars, Toyota 1,587; January–August 2026: 30,559 electric, 28,577 hybrid, 16,945 plug-in hybrid, 22,357 petrol); its year-to-date new total, 112,390, is seven cars above the sum of the months because the taxation-class table restated June 2026. SIMI's registration figures run a few per cent above the CSO's licensings of private cars (2025: 124,954 new cars registered against 120,797 new private cars licensed, 71,813 used imports against 71,604, 23,601 battery-electric against 23,398), because SIMI counts every new car registered, taxis and other non-private taxation classes included, and licensing follows registration by days to weeks, so a plate-change month spills into the next (August 2025: SIMI 7,615, CSO 9,355). Its top-five brands, models and electric models for 2025 are the same cars in the same order here, except that Yaris Cross and Octavia swap places (nine cars apart).

Caveats

• Counts are the CSO's official first licensings of private cars: new cars and second-hand imports. Model rows are the CSO's make-and-model categories; about 3–4 % of new cars fall into its 'Other' category and appear in no model row. Used imports are published by make only. BEV and PHEV columns are blank before January 2024, when the CSO began publishing fuel by model.
• Percentages are shown only when the comparison month has at least 30 registrations.
• Make and model names are normalised: the CSO's spellings ("Landrover", "Mercedes Benz", "KIA" and "Kia", "Volkwagen") are unified, Mercedes-Benz is grouped by class, the CSO's Countryman, MG5 and MGS6 entries are placed under Mini and MG, its bare "Mini" entry is the Mini hatch, "Suzuki SX4" is the S-Cross and "Aygo Cross" the Aygo X. The full alias table is in the repository.
• The CSO publishes no CO₂ in g/km, no country of origin and no age at import, so those sections of other markets' pages do not exist here.
• Brands with fewer than 50 registrations over the 36 months have no brand page and appear as plain text in the tables.
• Licensing is not sale: dealer demo stock and leasing fleets are licensed too.

Data files

Every page is generated from JSON under /data/ie/: meta.json, months.json, YYYY-MM.json (with kpis, models[], makes[], fuel[], import_make[], import_band[], bev_models[], bev_makes[]), makes.json, makes/<slug>.json. Free to reuse with attribution to the CSO and auto-stats.eu (CC BY 4.0).