Madam,– As Damian Hanley (October 28th) rightly points out, Daylight Saving is a means to reduce energy consumption and maximise the use of limited natural daylight.
By advancing our legal time during the summer months we are able to gain on average an extra two hours daylight in the evening compared with our mean solar time. We still lose out on a lot of daylight in the early morning – which is something our continental neighbours utilise better.
Ireland and the United Kingdom are not the only European countries to use Co-ordinated Universal Time as their legal time. Continental Portugal and Iceland are also share our time zone. It’s also not strictly true that we follow the UK blindly. Our summer time is formally known as “Am Caighdeánach na hÉireann (Irish Standard Time)”.
The effect of moving to Central European Time (UTC+1) would allow us to align our working days with the western part of the continent. Our habits might have to change as our daylight hours would shift, but I expect that within a few years we would have grown used to it – how many currency changes have we experienced in the past 40 years?
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – When will we finally agree to adopt Central European Time? When the big hand and the little hand are at one!
– Yours, etc,