UK Reg Car What happens if I drive my girlfriends UK car

Kye

I am Irish with an Irish driving licence and the car is UK Reg and she is over here temp any problems with Customs & Excise etc

Anan1

Kye wrote:

I am Irish with an Irish driving licence and the car is UK Reg and she is over here temp any problems with Customs & Excise etc

They could impound it, as you're not legally entitled to drive it at all.

murphaph

Kye wrote:

I am Irish with an Irish driving licence and the car is UK Reg and she is over here temp any problems with Customs & Excise etc

Shouldn't think so. So long as you're insured to drive it I can't see a problem. Will you be driving it alone, that might make it look a bit 'sus' but if she's whith you and has a documentation to back up the story then can't see any problems.

Anan1

murphaph wrote:

Shouldn't think so. So long as you're insured to drive it I can't see a problem. Will you be driving it alone, that might make it look a bit 'sus' but if she's whith you and has a documentation to back up the story then can't see any problems.

Irish residents are not permitted to drive foreign registered cars here, full stop. Customs would be quite within their rights to impound the car. A quick call to customs will confirm this.

seamus

Anan1 wrote:

Irish residents are not permitted to drive foreign registered cars here, full stop.

Have you a link to any relevant statutes. From what I've read it's perfectly legal provided that the car doesn't belong to him (or another Irish resident) and/or is not here permanently.

$Leon$

When foreign cars are brought into the country the only person allowed drive them is the person who drove it in in the first place. so it is illegal. don't no if its a customs issue though

murphaph

OP, I'd ake some of the 'advice' you're getting here with a large pinch of salt. If it were illegal for irish residents to drive foreign cars then what about the case of the dundalk man who works for a Newry company driving a UK registered vehicle as a sales rep in Dublin? Illegal, I think not! It would totally go against EU law to have an outright ban on a domestic resident of ANY EU state from driving a vehicle registered in another state. The rules are clear enough, if you are permanently relocating you need to register your car in the new country, but not if the stay is temporary. The fact that the OP is irish and resident here makes no difference as far as I can see as it's not his car, it's owned by a foreign national who is not resident here. The insurance is the only issue for me.

$Leon$

murphaph wrote:

If it were illegal for irish residents to drive foreign cars then what about the case of the dundalk man who works for a Newry company driving a UK registered vehicle as a sales rep in Dublin? Illegal, I think not!

Read what i said again. I said who ever drove the car into the state. in this case that would be the dundalk man so that wouldn't be a problem.

murphaph

$Leon$ wrote:

Read what i said again. I said who ever drove the car into the state. in this case that would be the dundalk man so that wouldn't be a problem.

Ok, so what if Dundalk man has an irish colleague in the Newry based company working out of their satellite office in say Cork? You don't think he would be allowed drive his own company's car because he didn't originally drive it across the border?

seamus

$Leon$ wrote:

When foreign cars are brought into the country the only person allowed drive them is the person who drove it in in the first place. so it is illegal. don't no if its a customs issue though

The only relevant statute I could find deals with duty payable. One of the requirements is that in order to be exempt from duty, the vehicle can only be driven by someone else in carrying out the owner's business. Otherwise, only the owner may drive it.

Now, this doesn't mean it's illegal for you to drive the vehicle, it means that if you drive the vehicle, you have failed to declare it for duty. But is it actually illegal (and is it immoral in this circumstance) to drive a vehicle that has not had the duty paid on it? That is, he couldn't be pulled by a Garda for committing any specific traffic offence.

jimmycrackcorm

murphaph wrote:

OP, I'd ake some of the 'advice' you're getting here with a large pinch of salt. If it were illegal for irish residents to drive foreign cars then what about the case of the dundalk man who works for a Newry company driving a UK registered vehicle as a sales rep in Dublin? Illegal, I think not! It would totally go against EU law to have an outright ban on a domestic resident of ANY EU state from driving a vehicle registered in another state. The rules are clear enough, if you are permanently relocating you need to register your car in the new country, but not if the stay is temporary. The fact that the OP is irish and resident here makes no difference as far as I can see as it's not his car, it's owned by a foreign national who is not resident here. The insurance is the only issue for me.

I remember reading a case where the customs lifted a norther reg company car from a sales rep who lived down south. Nothing they could do. They can lift it. But having said that - unless they have been watching you,you can simply say that you have moved up north and kept your licence.

vector

from the horses mouth

http://www.revenue.ie/leaflets/vrt2.htm

the term they use is "Normal residence", not "Nationality" (so having a British or other countries passport is no good), not "Licence" (so exchaning you IE licence for a UK one is no good),

seamus

Yeah, that's a prettied-up version of what I read vector.

So to answer the OP's question - you can drive it, but if you happen to come across a Garda having a very bad day, it could be impounded.

Anan1

"The vehicle may not in any circumstances be driven by a State resident."

Simple as.

Esel

AFAIK it is definitely illegal for a resident of the State to drive a 'temporarily imported vehicle'.

MrPudding

murphaph wrote:

If it were illegal for irish residents to drive foreign cars then what about the case of the dundalk man who works for a Newry company driving a UK registered vehicle as a sales rep in Dublin? Illegal, I think not!

I posted a link to the full VRT manual from the revenue. There are a number of exceptions where an Irish resident can *temporarily* drive a foreign register car. One of those exceptions is where the car is own by you employer and you employer is a foregin person or entity. even in this case it is only a temporary exemption and it seems that the revenue would expect the car to be reregistered or an Irish registered car used.

I did a lot of research on this as we were going to import a car from France which would have been registered in my GFs French Dad's name. Durign the course of our research we came to the conclusion that the car could be inpounded.
With the exception of a few temporary exceptions persons resident in Ireland cannot drive a car unless VRT has been paid on it.

MrP

Alun

MrPudding wrote:

With the exception of a few temporary exceptions persons resident in Ireland cannot drive a car unless VRT has been paid on it.

I'm not sure that payment of VRT is necessarily the criterion here. In the case, say, of a car that had been imported by someone moving permanently to Ireland from another EU country under the 6 month rule, the car would be registered in Ireland. That would be perfectly legal, but no VRT would have been paid.

MrPudding

Alun wrote:

I'm not sure that payment of VRT is necessarily the criterion here. In the case, say, of a car that had been imported by someone moving permanently to Ireland from another EU country under the 6 month rule, the car would be registered in Ireland. That would be perfectly legal, but no VRT would have been paid.

That is an interesting point. I would want to check it out further though before relying on it if trying to use it as a loophole. It would not surprise me if they had it covered.

MrP