I move the motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of Deputy Hurley and myself:—
That the Emergency Powers (No. 22) Order, 1940, which was made on February 12th, 1940, and tabled on February 21st, 1940, be and is hereby annulled.
The authors of the fantastic device, which is now called summer time, made a case for it originally, and have apologised for it at frequent periods since, on quite different grounds from those which the Minister for Justice relied on when making his case for it last week. The innovation was originally described as a daylight saving measure, but in the reply which the Minister gave to a query on this matter last week he entirely shifted the case for it from the alleged saving of daylight to that of the convenience of railway time tables—a standard arrangement between railway transport systems in this country and in other countries. I think his answer was unconvincing. This craze for what was then described as daylight saving was originally heard of a good many years ago. Certain gentlemen in England, with a mission to bring about a reformation of a certain kind, began to bombard the newspapers with letters on the subject, and continued their campaign by way of issuing pamphlets. All this resulted, after some time, in the introduction of measures to secure the object they had in view, but these measures were rejected on more than one occasion by the British Parliament. Occasionally, in Great Britain as in other countries, freak legislation finds its way to the statute book. That happened in the case of what was then described as daylight saving.
At the present time we are discussing in this country, with a good deal of anxiety and interest, the question of Partition. I am old enough to remember a proposal being made by a private member in the British House of Commons along the lines that the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, ultimately took. The proposal was laughed to scorn at the time, but it resulted in certain legislation afterwards, and in much the same way this freak suggestion of daylight saving ultimately resulted in the passage into law of a Bill in the British House of Commons in 1916. This followed on the introduction of a similar proposal in Germany some time earlier. It is not without significance to remember that Germany has long ago discarded this method of daylight saving or what is known as summer time. Many of the other countries which adopted this system have either abolished it, altered it, or ignored it in one particular way or another.
The whole method of calculating time, arranging time, and standardising time in a certain way has an interesting history. I do not know that it would be necessary to go into that at length to-night, as, although it is not without interest, I think there is not very much occasion for doing so. It will be enough to say that, with the spread of the railway system, a certain national standard of time was introduced into many countries, and that the railways of England followed London time, while the Irish railways followed Dublin time. The same thing happened in other countries. This led to a certain amount of confusion, which was ultimately settled at a conference in Washington in 1883, when certain zones of time were arranged. By a somewhat peculiar coincidence, the fixing of the time zones at that conference resulted in a position of anomaly for this country, as the effect was that certain parts of this country—if that time zone had been strictly adhered to—would be one hour different to other parts—the West of Ireland would be one hour different to certain portions of Leinster, and so on. Of course, that ridiculous situation could not be permitted, and we had our own time standard permitted and sanctioned by that international conference. It is somewhat significant that that concession bestowed on us internationally was taken away from us by a one-clause measure passed in the British House of Commons in 1916, and coming into operation in October of that year.
This innovation—summer time—is largely experimental. Referring to the measure passed in this House in 1925, that measure was adopted because it was an innovation that possessed, superficially at least, a certain amount of attraction for a number of people. It was permitted to go through because it was just an interesting experiment that time and experience would be able to tell the value of.
I think we have had ample opportunity to examine the effects of this system since then and I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that the volume of protest against it has been growing steadily since and that it has grown to a very considerable volume in recent years. Whatever may be the result of the discussion here this evening, I believe that summer time as we know it is doomed and that we have only to wait a short time to see the end of it in one form or another. That cannot come too soon; hence I propose to ask the House to-night to annul the order for which the Minister has been responsible for giving effect to the measure for this year.
One objection to summer time is very well known. It comes from the rural population, who dislike the inconvenience of the system, and the difficulty that the system provides for the agriculturist generally—in regard to the milking of cattle and in regard to other aspects of agriculture in the country. In fact, in certain countries where it was introduced, as in the United States, the storm of protest from the agricultural section became so marked that it was withdrawn and a watereddown system of local time was provided for certain States, in substitution. Obviously, the system is—and will continue to be—extremely unpopular in rural areas, because of the dislocation and confusion that it results in and because of the direct loss which, to my mind, results in the agricultural industry.
Perhaps the most harmful effect of summer time is that on the children. It was stated somewhere recently that one section of the population of this country works extremely hard and that that section is the children. Anybody in a position to know what school children have to do at the present time, the amount of work they have to put in after school hours, understands that this is entirely true. There seems to be little doubt about the effect of this measure on the health of children. If there is any doubt, the authorities which have offered their opinion in that respect adduce very convincing proof of their contention. I have here some views on that particular aspect of the case, of which I ought to put the House in possession. One view is as recent as the 22nd February. In it, the Senior District Justice in this city criticises the effect of summer time very severely in his court. He criticises its effect on the children and says that "various ailments coupled with malnutrition marked the track of a bitter winter and a searching spring." He went on to emphasise the additional effect and resulting ill-health that summer time would cause in such connection. He did not begin to discover the adverse effect of summer time on the children this year, as in April, 1938, he was responsible for the following views expressed in the Dublin District Court on 11th April, 1938, when he said:—
"In this morning's papers I have read the report of the School Attendance Department of the City of Dublin for 1937. Upon the cause for non-attendance I wish to state that a year's experience as the Justice presiding in the Children's Court has convinced me that the opening of schools by Statute one hour and twenty-five minutes in advance of the sun's course, has been, and will be, a constant cause of decrease in the percentage of attendance and also a danger to the health, to the physical and nervous welfare of the children of this city.
"Children living in crowded and noisy streets, docked at the end of the day of their natural sleep, are by Statute forced to rise at hours unnatural to childhood.
"Reports from teachers, lay and clerical, are agreed that children harassed by cold and lack of sleep arrive at school numbed in body and mind, incapable of concentration until the mid-day sun brings back the circulation to their little bodies.
"The greatest good of the greatest number is the ground on which these Acts are defended. Are children then a commodity of which there is no supply; for which there is no demand? Are ‘the gay young things' that swing the racket and the club alone to be considered?"
I anticipate that the Minister will meet that portion of the argument against summer time with the explanation that there is no obligation on the school authorities to arrange hours of attendance at school in accordance with summer time, but in fact that does not make the position one bit easier. In the last week there has been an extremely confusing set of arrangements in operation in various parts of the country. The schools in one particular place observe summer time; the neighbouring schools observe winter time, or what is familiarly known locally as old time; and in other schools a standard is adopted which seeks to find a happy medium between summer time and old time. I have personal experience of the fact that children in the same household in a small town have two or three sets of time for their attendance at school, which makes things extremely unsatisfactory and confusing. There are some other authorities that can be quoted in this respect, and one is the County Medical Officer of Health for no less important a place than Cork City. I will quote from the Cork Examiner of February 26, 1940, which gives an account of a meeting to protest against the proposed introduction of summer time:—
"Dr. J.C. Saunders, City M.O.H., said he was completely and unequivocally in agreement with the purpose of the meeting. It was of the utmost importance that nothing should be done which would interfere in any way with the national rhythm of things, especially as experienced in the routine of the farming community. It was a very extraordinary thing that it should be necessary at all to have such a protest meeting held against the legal enactment which caused so much interference with the people's way of living. It would seem that we are living in an age when the minds of people seem to be obsessed with attempting to improve on the methods of nature. I see this a great deal in my own profession and we see it everywhere else.
"Dr. Saunders went on to refer to the adverse effects of summer time on children, and said apparently the origination of the Act overlooked the probable and possible effects on the child population.... Teachers had noticed that there was an inability on the part of the children to concentrate while in school and a reduced capacity to absorb the tuition they received, and increased effort was required from the teachers to impress their teaching. Children could not be got to bed during the operation of the Summer Time Act until 11 or 12 o'clock at night. They got insufficient sleep, and because of that there was greater vulnerability to contract disease. Summer time was bad enough in its original form, but it was worse still to bring it into force in February instead of April. There was a suggestion thrown out, he believed, further to prolong summer time by another hour during the year. ‘Any further extension would really be disastrous, in my opinion,' said Dr. Saunders. ‘Not only should we press for the abolition of the Summer Time Act, but they should also seek the restoration of their own standard Irish time.'"
That statement was strongly supported by Mr. T.P. Dowdall, T.D., in the course of a statement which followed that of Dr. Saunders. Another very prominent authority in this matter, a school medical inspector of the Kent County Health Department, expresses his views on summer time in the following terms:—
"The teaching staff are in the best position to judge and observe signs of lack of sleep in school children. Such signs are irritability, touchiness, peevishness, or fidgetiness, inattention or lack of interest in work, lethargy, sleepiness or other signs of fatigue. These are the most immediate signs of insufficient sleep which can be noticed before any actual interference with nutrition can be established."
A further article by a Lecturer on Diseases of Children, School of Medicine of the Royal College, Edinburgh, said:—
"We have been told over the wireless that one of the reasons for maintaining this so-called summer time is that our watches may be in unison with continental time! Why need we worry about continental time? We are not constantly going abroad. It looks as if it were difficult to find a real excuse for keeping this Act in force."
I think in those very words can be found a complete answer to the Minister's statement last week that this was merely a matter of convenience for the purpose of arranging some kind of standard accommodation between this country and other countries. Somebody has suggested that it would be inconvenient for tourists coming into this country if there were different arrangements in the matter of time. Of course, the answer to that is that people going from this country to Great Britain or countries abroad will have to meet with very frequent changes of time, which do not in the end result in any inconvenience, beyond just fitting oneself in with whatever time prevails in the particular country in which one is travelling. I do not think it is any exaggeration to describe this whole system as a sort of make-believe, a rather farcical make-believe, and I think in the end an unprofitable and unhealthy form of make-believe. It has been said that this whole world is a stage and that men and women are merely players, but if, in pursuance of that philosophy, we are to have a good deal of make-believe associated with life, it ought to take some other form. I think there is a very definite case to be made for the viewpoint that this is not alone unprofitable, as I have said, but definitely unhealthy, and a wrong to that section of our population which ought to be the subject of our most serious concern—our growing children. Their problems are serious enough at the present time. Their outlook for the future in this country is difficult enough without making the years of their childhood more difficult and more unhappy than the strenuous form of study they have to do makes them at the present time. The Minister's reply, of course, will include a statement that an inquiry into this matter is proposed. I do not think that what we require in regard to this matter is so much an inquiry as a decision. I think the facts are indisputable. I think no case can be made for the retention of this particular system, and that what we want is a decision. The Minister appears reluctant to make that decision. I do not know what is the purpose of retaining this system. I do not want to suggest that it is merely part of the step-by-step policy which is apparent in legislation generally in another part of the country. I do not believe it is. Whatever the reason is, the Minister seems reluctant to change it, and I ask the House to change it by annulling this Order.
