David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Broughan on introducing the Bill. He and I have had an interest in this issue for quite a number of years and have been raising it periodically in debates, tabling questions on it and so on. As he rightly noted, the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, which I chair, held a session on this issue on 30 November 2011. The IFA and IBEC appeared before the joint committee, as did some representatives from various Departments and there was a very interesting discussion. The issue has also been debated in the House of Commons, where Rebecca Harris introduced a Private Members' Bill and a report also was drawn up. In the main, there appears to be much support for the proposal in both islands. I take the point of the Deputy opposite, who suggested we should not copperfasten the Border any further by having two different time zones and he is absolutely correct. I believe this might only work on a European-wide basis and I note that EC Directive No. 84 of 2000 establishes summer time arrangements for the 28 member states. Colleagues also have raised this proposal in the European Parliament a number of times and I believe all European Union member states must agree and jump together in this regard.

I first became alerted to this issue while visiting the United States, when I noticed the time change there took place at a different time of the year. In 2007, the United States extended the use of daylight savings time in the hope of optimising further the available sunlight and reducing energy costs and carbon emissions. Before 2007, the dates in the United States for daylight saving time were the same as those which obtained in the European Union, that is, it would start on the first Sunday in April and would end on the last Sunday of October of each year. However, from 2007, daylight savings time was changed to begin at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and to end at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November. In 2008, the United States Department of Energy produced a report stating that the change had saved enough energy to power 100,000 homes for more than a year, that is, 1.3 trillion watt-hours per day. This translated into financial savings of $76 million and while the United States is far bigger than Ireland, were this done across the European Union, the figures might be comparable. In addition, declines of between 8% and 11% and between 6% and 7% in pedestrian and vehicular crashes, respectively, were reported in the weeks following the switch to daylight savings time. The aforementioned report stated further that this was due to the increased ability to see during twilight hours versus hours in the dark and that extending the daylight savings time period increased the length of time during the day that vision for drivers was optimal and led to awareness among drivers that prevented crashes.

There have been multiple investigations in the United Kingdom on the subject, which have revealed multiple benefits, quite a number of which Deputy Broughan already has outlined. There was a recent proposal to enact single-double summer time and while this is quite complicated, Deputy Colreavy has explained it in great detail and clarity. I thank him for that, as I now am not obliged to so do.

See this speech in context