Should Ireland move the clocks forward an hour forever?
That’s the question before TDs today, when the Dáil debates legislation to move to another time zone.
Labour’s Tommy Broughan wants the Department of Justice to commission a report on the issue.
As the name suggests, The ‘Brighter Evenings Bill proposes to make evenings longer by moving the clocks forward an hour.
It wants Ireland to undergo a three-year experiment of moving the clocks forward to fall into line with Central European Time.
Next year, Ireland would move the clocks forward in March as usual – but wouldn’t move backwards in October, leaving us in the same time zone as most European countries.
The bill also wants the Minister for Justice to commission a report on the benefits of changing the time zone.
The legislation isn’t likely to pass: EU law says every member state has to move the clocks forward and backwards at exactly the same time.
Therefore Ireland would need to get the approval of every other EU country if we wanted to step out of line.
The government is also reluctant to move to a different time zone than the UK.
If it was passed, stepping over the border to Northern Ireland would literally mean going back in time.
