The car shows up as having been exported from Ireland because the reg doc will have been returned to them when the car was registered in the UK (on its original plate there), so I can't just stick the previous plates on, unfortunately.

As regards taking the hit on back tax, the car was exported at the end of 2012 so the cheaper alternative to paying the back tax would be to pay the VRT again and save myself the price of another nice toy! As a matter of principle, I will not pay VRT on the same car twice .

I know there's no VRT to pay because I paid it when I first owned the car in 2008 (and I have all of that documentation in the history file) and it was exported back to the UK (by me, again all documented) before the refund scheme was introduced. I'm not sure I'd trust these genius's with the UK reg document (re. posting it to Shannon with a cover note) until I have a fair idea that they'll be handing out an Irish one.

I've really only used the car to get to the NCTS and MTO offices since I got it back, so I'm not too worried about the long arm of the law showing interest, but it'll stick in my throat (but would be no surprise) if they insist on it being taxed from the date of arrival in the country.

The main problem is that there doesn't seem to be a list anywhere that someone can point to and say "get that lot, come back a to us and we'll get you sorted". I've no idea what requirements there might be on the page after the one they gave me today outlining what should be on this headed certificate.

One small piece of good news since my first post is that I got a few minutes to pop over to Conlon's. They were quite helpful (by they I mean Noreen the Service Receptionist, who in fairness has always done her best to be helpful through the years) and have a record of the car on their system from previous work and have given me a letter headed confirmation of the details, at no charge. We'll see now if the MTO have any holes to pick in this, but in fairness it details exactly what they've asked for but who knows if its in the right font, or needs to be in Irish or some other useless excuse to not get off their arses.

Further reports later!