Senator Quinn, you have ten minutes and there are five minutes for the Minister to reply.
Adjournment Matters. - Time Arrangements.
Acting Chairman
I welcome the Minister to the House for the second time this week. I hope that we will be able to make real progress today on an issue that I suggest is both important and, if the Minister will forgive the pun, timely.
I am asking the Minister to consider moving Ireland to central European time with effect from this time next year — that is, putting our clocks forward one hour compared to the way we have them now. We should still retain the difference between summer and winter time, the difference being that we would have shifted forward one hour in both cases. The effect of this would be that the time here in Ireland would be the same as that in our major European markets such as France, Germany and Italy. This would move us into line with eight of the 11 member states in the European Community and in line with several other European countries also.
Allow me to outline some of the reasons why this is important. First, the fact that we are one hour behind mainland Europe makes it much more difficult for us to sell to Europe because it reduces the period of the day when we and they are doing business at the same time. It makes contact that much more difficult. When they get to their offices in the morning, we are still on our way to work. When we try to contact them in the late morning, they have already left for lunch. When they call us back on their return from lunch, we are in turn gone to lunch. By the time we get back from lunch it is already mid-afternoon in Europe and if we try to contact people around 4 p.m. our time they have already knocked off for the rest of the day.
As a result of this simple one hour time difference, contacting people on mainland Europe and doing business with them can be a long succession of chasing around the mulberry bush. I am sure the Minister has plenty of experience of this particular frustration in dealing with Brussels. It is not the only problem which arises because of our time difference. It also makes it much more difficult for business people to travel to mainland Europe and get back in the one day. That increases all of our costs. If we leave Dublin Airport at 8 a.m., it is already 9 a.m. in mainland Europe and by the time we get to Paris, for instance — certainly before getting into the centre of the city — it is almost mid-day. Because the French enjoy their food, they tend to have longer lunch breaks and as a result, we often do not even meet them in time. That lost hour makes the crucial difference between having some of the morning available for business and losing the whole morning. If we look only at the business dimension — the viewpoint of those doing business with our European partners by phone or in person — this difference in time is a definite and real handicap. The worst aspect is that it is totally unnecessary. It is a handicap we can remove it at the stroke of a pen and the pen is the Minister's.
However, I would not like anyone to think that I want to change the clock solely because of business, important though it is with regard to our exports and our ability to sell. Changing the time would bring us other benefits. They include longer evenings throughout the year. This struck me on Sunday when I realised that it was already getting dark at 5 p.m. That would improve the quality of all of our lives and have a real economic benefit because it would make the country more attractive as a tourist destination. Our long summer evenings are already an attraction. We would extend that attraction to a much wider period. Indeed in mid-summer, we would turn Ireland, like Norway, into a land of the midnight sun. That would especially help the west and I am friendly to that region. On the last occasion the Minister of State was in the House, we made some interesting comments on helping tourism in the west and here is an opportunity to do more for the region because there is an urgent need to boost our tourist attraction.
Longer evenings throughout the year would also produce savings on energy costs, both at national and domestic level. That is a real benefit to the household budget. Even more important, longer evenings would reduce the number of road accidents, would save lives and would avoid some of the personal tragedies resulting from traffic accidents. These benefits are not just pie in the sky. On the contrary, they were all clearly demonstrated during the late 1960s when we did exactly what I am proposing. However, we made that experiment only because Britain decided to do so. When Britain made the mistake of misinterpreting the figures and misunderstanding the results of the experiment and went back to the old time, we followed them. We meekly fell in step with Britain but out of step with the EC, which we were to join a few years later.
This issue is timely. In Britain, they are beginning to see that they made a mistake in reverting to Greenwich Mean Time. That great British bureaucracy is beginning to lumber slowly into action and it now seems likely that they will join Central European Time within the next five years. We are faced with the question: do we wait once again for nanny to move and then meekly follow or do we for once take the initiative and decide to make the move ourselves? It is inevitable that we will move to Central European Time at some stage, so I suggest we should do it now and show clearly, both to ourselves and those outside, that we have decided for ourselves and not because our neighbours have done so. We should be the first. We should consider leaving the nursery without nanny. This may produce a quaint solution for a while until Britain falls into line, but what of that? There is a short term advantage for us in being an hour ahead of Britain. We could get on a plane at 8 a.m. in Dublin and arrive in London at 7.50 a.m. and that would be an advantage.
Moving to Central European Time would create more jobs by making it easier for us to do business in Europe, by making our tourist product even more attractive, would save on energy costs and it should save lives on the road. We should make this change quickly, and, for once, we should show that we are capable of deciding these matters for ourselves rather than meekly following the coat-tails of our neighbour across the Irish Sea. I am asking the Minister to consider the matter, I do not expect him to announce a decision today, and I ask him to bring some urgency to that consideration because if we are to make this happen in one year's time, decisions will have to be taken quickly. We should move immediately.
I can assure the Senator that in view of the excellent case he has made I will certainly give his suggestion some consideration. I presume what he has in mind is that Ireland should move from Greenwich Mean Time to Central European Time, thus bringing us into line with our continental European partners. Certainly there is much to be said for that. Undoubtedly, such a move would bring many benefits, particularly in the areas of commerce and transport.
However, such a change may not be universally well received. It would mean that we would have to adopt a system of double summertime between the end of March and October with what I will loosely refer to as single summertime during the winter months. This latter approach was taken on an experimental basis both here and in Britain for a number of years in the late 1960s but it was abandoned because of widespread public criticism. I know that this issue is being seriously looked at in the United Kingdom. A White Paper has been published and there has been wide consultation on the matter. However, I understand that no final decision has been made there as to whether a change will take place.
The Senator will appreciate that, given our geographical location and our trading links with Britain and most important of all, our land border with Northern Ireland, it would create huge difficulties for us if we were to decide unilaterally to move to Central European Time while Britain remained with Greenwich Mean Time. There would be an all year round difference of one hour between us and Northern Ireland and, of course, the whole of Britain. This factor could outweigh advantages derived from our adoption of Central European Time.
As the Senator will know, the commencement and end date for summertime in the EC is governed by Directive. The present directive — the Sixth Directive — provides that the ending of summertime for the continental states is September, whereas for Ireland and the United Kingdom, it is October. I understand that the Seventh EC Directive, which is now being finalised, will provide the end of October as the synchronised date for ending summertime throughout the EC, with effect from 1997. If the proposals in the Seventh Directive are adopted, it will eliminate the confusion which occurs at present as a result of the continental states ending summertime one month earlier than Ireland and the UK, a matter about which the Senator has previously expressed concern.
The Department of Justice is monitoring developments in the United Kingdom with regard to common interests which we have in this regard and close contact is being maintained with the Home Office on this matter. Should it be that consideration is to be given to a change in the existing basic time arrangements which have been in place since 1971, the Department of Justice, having direct responsibility for the matter, would initiate a wide ranging consultation process with all the various interested parties prior to any decision being taken by the Government.