Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the objectives of Deputy Broughan and his motivation in putting forward this Bill. Certainly, Deputy Broughan has made a strong and trenchant case for the Bill, but I have one serious problem with it, which I will get to later. Aristotle once said that time is the most unknown of all unknown things. The House can legislate for many things, from taxes to peace and war, but we cannot legislate for something that, I imagine, most of us would desire, that is, more time. Often, we have arguments in the House - there was a particular exchange of views this morning - about allowing greater time for this and greater time for that. We shout and condemn each other for not carrying through on our promises on time. However, the one thing we cannot do is create new time. We only have the ability to manage the time we are given. Let us imagine an Oireachtas in which we could create time to achieve all the things that we set out and aspire to achieve. Regardless, unfortunately, we must use the time we have here to the best of our ability.

I will discuss daylight savings now, as distinct from time. Daylight savings is common in countries where the hours of daylight vary depending on the season. The practice was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 as a means of reducing the amount of money that people had to spend on candles.

Between 1880 and 1916 Ireland operated a different time zone to Britain. Dublin mean time, as it was called, was measured by the Dunsink Observatory. This was changed in 1916 when Irish time was brought into line with Britain and daylight saving time was introduced as well.

We are discussing single double summertime - this is very complicated-----

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