Ireland's Time Zone: Are we on the correct time during Winter (GMT)?

foxymm

As we've all seen in the last week with us reverting back to GMT by turning the clocks back by one hour, Irish Winter time has landed with a vengeance. The dark evenings are among us now for the next 3-4 months or so but thankfully for a while or so the mornings will be brighter.

Although we are in the same time zone as the U.K., mainly for economic reasons, and the fact of N.I. also, there is a genuine debate about how beneficial this is for us in personal and social terms. We, Irish, are notoriously renowned for our difficulties in rising in the morning (all year round may I add), and the main reason for this is that the Sun does not rise until between 8.30am and 9am in the darkest and shortest days of Winter (depending on where you live on the Island that is).

I wonder would it be a good idea to set our clocks back by another half hour during Irish Winter Time, so being a half an hour behind U.K. time. Take for example in London on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises at 8:04am in Dublin it's 08:39am and on the West coast of Ireland it doesn't rise until 08:50-08:55am on the shortest days.

I believe brighter mornings would be much more advantageous for us and it would certainly make it easier to rise on those current dark, dreary mornings. I am only advocating 30 mins as a start. I certainly would favour a full hour of extra daylight in the morning.

It would mean it gets darker earlier in the eveings but there isn't much outdoor activities in Winter so brighter mornings would be nicer.

We would however re-synchronised with BST (British Summer Time) in March but Ireland would jump forward by +1:30 or 2 hours, whatever the case.

The idea of Ireland joining Central European Time, which is being considered by Eamon Ryan TD (Energy and Communications Minister), certainly is ludicrous and ridiculous. Imagine the sun not rising until between 09:30-10:00am in the morning. A non-runner in my opinion.

A penny for your thoughts.

Foxymm.

Podge_irl

Adding an extra half hour time zone that only we would be on seems unneccessarily complicated given the minimal advantages it would bring. Incidentally, we're not in the same time zone as the UK "mainly for economic reasons", we're in the same time zone as the UK cause that's the time zone we're in geographically.

What time is sunrise in Spain in winter? There are parts of Spain on a similar longitude to us, but they're on CET.

foxymm

Yeah, I understand what you are saying. We are geographically more or less in the same region but we are further west and at the edge of our time zone. There certainly is major differences.

If you compare London with Ireland during Summer time, the sun sets in London at 21:20 whereas it doesn't set on the western seaboard until 22:15 and given the long twilight we have after sunset, It isn't really dark until 23:00PM.

Personally, I would prefer brighter mornings during winter months.

Spain is much nearer the equator so it experiences longer daylight hours than us in Winter, about 2 hours more and their climate is much more temperate than ours in Winter.

Thanks for your opinion Podge Irl.

Healio

Forget turning them back at all, id rather have it brighter in the evenings*.

*Not being a morning person.

Supercell

Mornings = I have to go to work
Evenings = I go home from work

I am not a morning person, sunlight or no.

I prefer the evenings to be sunny like my mood, if anything I'd rather the extra brightness in the evenings when I have free time to do stuff I enjoy.

Michael Collins

Interesting idea. With the clocks going back at the moment it adds a bit of brightness to the mornings but takes it away from the evenings, if we were to go another hour the evenings would start to get dark very early, possibly 3pm? That would make it dark for kids going home from school, which parents arn't a fan of with a lot of them cycling etc. Unless the schools started earlier....

They debated this on Joe Duffy a while back. It was hillarious. People were saying that the clocks going back is all to please the farmers. One fella said

"Why must I send my kids to school in darkness just to keep them farmers happy?"

even though the clocks going back make it brighter in the morning! Typical people just complaining for the sake of it there...

Healio

Michael Collins wrote: »

"Why must I send my kids to school in darkness just to keep them farmers happy?"

even though the clocks going back make it brighter in the morning! Typical people just complaining for the sake of it there...

Im pretty sure its when we put them forward in the summer that the farmers are happy, means they can harvest longer.

blubloblu

It's been done before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC-0:25

Capt'n Midnight

Farmers have to work dawn to dusk in winter, regardless of what it says on the clock

Very few kids travel to school in anything other than a metal box with lights.


Save the daylight for people who would only otherwise to get to see it during lunch break.

Azelfafage

Twas Im'.................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Light_Saving_Time