ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code. It was first published in 1998.

The purpose of ISO 3166-2 is to establish an international standard of short and unique alphanumeric codes to represent the relevant administrative divisions and dependent territories of all countries in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than their full names. Each complete ISO 3166-2 code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen:

ISO 3166-2:IE

ISO 3166-2:IE is the entry for Ireland in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.

Currently for Ireland, ISO 3166-2 codes are defined for two levels of subdivisions:

The 26 counties are traditional counties, which are different from the first-level administrative subdivisions of Ireland.

Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is IE, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of Ireland. The second part is one or two letters. For the counties, the letters are generally the same as those currently used in vehicle registration plates, with the following exceptions: