UK Car Check for Ireland

Yes. The free Motorscan check covers any GB or NI registration: make, model, engine, colour, year, MOT history since 2005 with the recorded mileage at every test, tax status and keeper count. That's enough to catch clocking and confirm the car matches the advert. The write-off, stolen and finance registers — the ones that matter most before wiring money across the Irish Sea — are in the paid full check.

Not reliably — and this is the single biggest reason to run a UK check before importing. Write-off categories (Cat A, B, S, N) live in the UK insurance industry's MIAFTR database. Once a car is re-registered in Ireland it can present with a clean Irish record, which is why crash-damaged UK cars are disproportionately exported to Ireland. A Motorscan full check queries MIAFTR directly using the UK reg, before the car ever crosses.

Vehicle Registration Tax is charged when you first register the car in Ireland. For most passenger cars it's a percentage of the Open Market Selling Price (OMSP — Revenue's valuation of the car in Ireland, not what you paid), with the rate banded by CO2 emissions, plus a NOx levy based on the car's NOx output. Rates and bands change in budgets, so use Revenue's VRT calculator for a current quote before you buy — on some cars VRT alone erases the UK saving.

Very. A car imported from Great Britain generally needs a customs declaration, potentially customs duty (unless it qualifies as UK-origin under the trade agreement) and VAT at import, plus VRT. A qualifying vehicle that has been properly imported into and registered in Northern Ireland can usually be registered in Ireland without customs duty or import VAT — one reason NI-sourced cars command a premium. The rules have changed several times since Brexit, so confirm the current position on revenue.ie before committing.

In order: check the car's UK history (reg or VIN, above); agree the sale and get the V5C details and invoice; for GB cars, file the customs declaration and pay any duty and VAT; book a VRT appointment at an NCTS centre within 7 days of the car arriving and complete registration within 30 days; pay the VRT and NOx levy, get Irish plates, then motor tax and insurance. The history check is first for a reason — it's the only step that costs nothing to walk away from.

Post-Brexit it depends heavily on the car. Customs duty and VAT wiped out the easy savings on many GB cars, but imports still stack up for NI-sourced vehicles, for models where UK supply is deep and Irish supply thin, and for higher-value cars where even a taxed saving is real. Run the numbers — Revenue's VRT calculator plus your customs and VAT exposure — and run the history check before you fall in love with the price.

The free check shows the odometer reading at every MOT test in the car's UK life — a year-by-year timeline that makes clocking obvious. Two things to watch from Ireland: any reading lower than an earlier one, and the miles-to-kilometres conversion. UK odometers read miles; 80,000 miles is about 129,000 km. A '80,000' car re-advertised in km without the conversion is a 50,000-km lie.

Yes — the full check queries the UK finance registers and shows the lender, agreement type and start date. It matters because a large share of UK cars are on PCP or HP, meaning the finance company owns the car until the final payment. That interest doesn't dissolve at Dublin Port, and a seller flipping a financed car may not have the right to sell it at all.

The V5C registration certificate (the seller notifies the DVLA of permanent export and you keep the rest of the document — you'll need it for VRT), the sales invoice showing date and price, and proof of the car's origin if you'll claim preferential customs duty. Check the VIN on the V5C against the stamp on the car and against your Motorscan report. No V5C, no deal — the NCTS centre will want it.

Yes. Dealers and shipping agents often quote only the chassis number. Switch the search box above to the VIN tab, enter the 17 characters, and we resolve it to the UK registration and run the same report. Letters I, O and Q never appear in a VIN — if the number you were given contains one, it's been mistyped (or worse).

Yes — NI plates (the letter-number-letter format like XUI 1234) are UK registrations on the DVLA/DVA system with the same MOT history and insurance-industry records, so the check runs exactly the same. Given the customs advantages of NI-sourced cars, checking an NI reg before paying the NI premium is money well spent.