Shatter considers timely question which is really issue of justice

DÁIL SKETCH:ONCE IT was Boston, then Berlin. But now it may well be that Britain's hour has arrived. It could become a case of "Where Britain leads, Ireland follows". In which case it will all lead back to Berlin. And all for business.

And a little philosophy too, because it seems the question of time is an issue of justice. For it was to Minister for Justice Alan Shatter that the issue of time, specifically the prospect of moving the clock permanently an hour forward, was addressed.

Noel Harrington, Fine Gael TD for Cork South-West, asked whether the Minister had talked to his British and EU counterparts about moving Ireland to European time, especially since legislation in Britain on the issue was making a “timely” passage through the House of Commons.

The Minister had great difficulty coping with it all, a problem he acknowledged. The difficulty was not the question of time but the answer to time.

The Minister was doing his best not to laugh at the information his officials provided for him to answer this philosophical question about time. He admitted having difficulty keeping “a straight face” because he had so much time to read out his response, and he kept waiting for the Ceann Comhairle to interrupt him and tell him his time was up. It was all getting very “technical”, he said. But perhaps he meant silly.

Because the official parliamentary response to the deputy’s question included such departmental pearls as: “At present Ireland and the UK operate in the same time zone. Each year summer time begins at 1am Greenwich Mean Time on the last Sunday in March when clocks are put forward and ends at 1am GMT on the last Sunday in October when the clocks are put back one hour.” And they say it costs an average of €200 to prepare each reply to a parliamentary question.

Trying not to laugh at what he was reading, he admitted having difficulty keeping a straight face while answering the question “considering the details I have been given”. But he soldiered on, promising not to make an “untimely response” but “at this time” he had no plans to “change the time zone arrangements”.

Deputy Harrington acknowledged it might not be the Government’s number one priority, but the summer solstice was just over and Irish people “love to talk about time and weather”. He informed the House that June 21st may be the longest day, but June 22nd is the shortest night. But it “can be a serious issue in rural Ireland. It does affect farming and it does affect other areas” and Ireland “cannot afford to be out of time with our UK counterparts” or our continental neighbours.

Irish embassy and departmental officials had meetings with the British authorities and with the MP sponsoring the Bill in Britain, Rebecca Harris. The Minister was conscious of the implications and would try to ensure we were not lost in a “time warp”. It would be a particular difficulty if Northern Ireland was in a different time zone from the Republic. But a lighthearted discussion took a “dark” twist when Mick Wallace suggested an extra hour of daylight would be of great benefit to the construction industry, where it was a “real bummer” to have to stop working early.

But the Minister retorted that as far as the industry was concerned, “the State might have been a lot better if we had more darkness”. It might “have contained at least the hyperactive nature of the construction industry and the disaster that it’s brought to this country”.