Copyright sluggerotoole
It’s that time of the year once again when we all got an extra hour in bed as the clocks fell back (I hope everyone is well rested). We pay for it in the Spring of course when the clocks move forward and we LOSE an hour in bed, but that will be a problem for us then. But just as predictably, the debate over Daylight Savings has returned as well and Ireland, both North and South, is uniquely exposed. Most challenging is the push from Spain to do away with it on an EU wide level as Politico reports… “As you know, the clocks will change again this week and I, frankly, no longer see the point in it,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a video posted on X Monday morning. “In all the surveys in which Spaniards and Europeans are asked, the majority are against changing the time,” he said. “Moreover, there’s plenty of scientific evidence that shows it barely helps to save energy and has a negative impact on people’s health and lives.” Politico goes on to point out that “Sánchez will need to convince 15 out of the bloc’s 27 member countries, or a group of countries representing at least 65 percent of the EU’s population, to back the idea — and hope fewer than four capitals oppose it outright” and while the article cites opposition from Greece and Portugal to the move, Ireland must surely view any proposal to tinker with the system with trepidation. As the United Kingdom is no longer within the European Union there is no guarantee that it would similarly move to abolish Daylight Savings should Europe go and do so. Similarly, there is nothing stopping Westminster from deciding to abolish Daylight Savings by itself even if Europe retains the system. Either outcome would produce the long dreaded time border in Ireland, where it could be 7 o’clock in Donegal and 6 o’clock in Tyrone. Unionists would likely insist on remaining in the same time zone as Great Britain whilst Nationalists would argue that the whole of island of Ireland should retain the same time zone as a matter of common sense. It would be a complete mess, which is likely why Dublin is hoping the suggestion simply gets mired in the internal bureaucracies of both the EU and the UK and ends up going nowhere. Which so far has proven to be the case. But the Daylight Savings debate isn’t just confined to these shores with it being another source of division in the United States (as if any more of those were needed…). This report in Gallup from earlier this year shows that… “As the March 9 switch to daylight saving time (DST) approaches in the U.S., the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice. By contrast, 40% of U.S. adults say they are in favor of daylight saving time, while 6% are uncertain. These findings come from a Jan. 21-27 Gallup poll, which marks the first time Gallup has measured Americans’ opinions about daylight saving time since 1999. During the 26-year interlude, views about the practice have shifted dramatically. In 1999, 73% favored daylight saving time, similar to the 74% who did so in a 1990 poll. Support was more muted in readings from 1937 to 1957, when between 51% and 57% were in favor, though daylight saving time was not uniformly observed across the U.S. in that period.” As with the EU and the UK, proposed changes are snarled in bureaucracy and opposition but if the US ever did move ahead and abolish Daylight Savings time it could create side effects in the American companies that have set up subsidiaries in Ireland, the UK and the rest of the EU as their workforces would either have to accommodate themselves to working patterns that would shift as the clocks did in Europe alone (introducing a bi-annual disruption to people’s routines) or the US companies would have to adapt to their European colleagues schedules shifting around over the course of the year. Many companies find ways of working through the periods when Europe’s clocks shift and clocks in the US have yet to follow suit but it may not be as feasible to use those methods for around half a year at a time. The obvious solution would be for the nations of the world to hammer out an agreement on Daylight Savings Time, but given the era we now live in perhaps hoping for international co-operation to come up with a solution is too much to hope for.
