Irish James Bond Wannabe Escapes Plate Prosecution

Demonstrating remarkable restraint and a commendable sense of proportion, an Irish court has thrown out charges of fraud against a hapless motorist who altered his number plate.

Richard Homer of Clogham, in County Donegal, decided to add an extra '0' to his number plate to create a James Bond '007'. Vehicle registrations in the Republic of Ireland normally comprise two numbers to represent the year of issue, one or two characters to identify the area ('DL' for Donegal in this instance) and, finally, up to six numbers relating to the particular vehicle.

In common with licensing authorities the world over, Eire has never taken the opportunity to employ letter-only formats, which would have vastly increased the availability of short combinations.

Homer felt that his 2007 ('07') registration would benefit enormously from an extra zero so it would read 007DL. Unfortunately the local police failed to appreciate the funny side. He was stopped by Garda (police officer) Marcus O'Dowd who described to the court the conversation that took place. When questioned why he had fitted the illegal 'James Bond' plates, Homer said he had done it "just for the craic (fun)."

He admitted receiving warnings about it before but had chosen to ignore them. His solicitor, Frank Dorrian pleaded a convincingly logical case along the lines that, "no amount of zeros before the number seven would have changed the fact it was a still a 2007 registered vehicle." Adding that his client was, after all, driving a van, not an Aston Martin, Mr Dorrian argued that no fraud was intended.

Asked whether he watched a lot of Bond movies, Homer replied that he did. Dismissing the charge as "unsafe", Judge Seamus Hughes mildly reprimanded him, commenting that maybe he might be, "a bit auld in the tooth" for this sort of thing.

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