"When this Bill is passed," said the Minister, as he then was, "we will have it also"— that is, Central European Time. "Iceland will be the only odd-man-out in the whole of Western Europe." I intervened to ask:
Is the Minister not aware that Italy has departed from this and introduced a different time from nearby countries last summer? In view of that how can he suggest that uniformity is imperative from the point of view of communications?
Mr. Moran: Italy and all these other countries have the same standard time as that proposed in this Bill.
There was a long controversy between us ending with the Minister saying with a meekness unusual in that particular Minister:
I will make inquiries as to that.
He did not know. He had not been told by his civil servants and was not well enough informed himself to know that Italy had in the previous year introduced its own summer time. This was not only a difference of adding a further hour but, for a period, a difference in the period during which the time changed in other countries, running from May to September instead of from March to October. It is that level of ignorance that informs the legislation coming before this House.
We are now told we must change back again. The truth is the Government made fools of themselves in changing in 1968. They were told it was an experimental period in Britain and the then Minister for Justice was aware of that because he said in the Dáil at column 1628 of volume 235 of the Official Report:
I should point out that a Government amendment to the British Bill proposes that it should run initially for a period of three years only.
The Government knew it was experimental. Yet, they felt we could not even be different from Britain for a year or two because it would be such a terrible economic tragedy in the state of political dependence into which this Government have got us 50 years after the Treaty. Of course, what the Government should have done was to wait and see rather than make this change, unless the change was thought to be desirable in its own right. When one reads the speeches of the Minister in these two debates in the Dáil and Seanad there is no suggestion that this was the right thing to do because it suited the needs of the country. Oh, no. This was what Britain was doing. The Minister argued it was right for this country to go one way in 1968 and it is right now to go the other way in 1971 because Britain is going the other way. We have no economic choice. We must do the same as Britain. Good or bad, we must follow Britain. That is the policy. Whether it is the right thing or the wrong thing has nothing to do with it. One would have thought that the question of whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing to do would have been the relevant approach to adopt in our own Parliament.
We are now going to change back again. In 1968, Deputy Ó Moráin was very concerned about our relations with Europe. That was a period during which we were not very active about going into the EEC. The EEC issue was dormant at the time but, even at a period when this was not an active issue, Deputy Ó Moráin, a great European, of course, said at column 839, Volume 65, of the Official Report of the Seanad:
In view, however, of the great and growing intercourse, commercial and otherwise, between this country and our close neighbours, in Europe, the advantages of having a common system of time are obvious
Now, that we are going into the EEC, we are going to have a different time from the majority of the countries in Europe with which we had such close intercourse in 1968. Where is the logic in that?
Moreover, the Minister for Justice has not referred to the impact of this change on accidents. I am not quite sure why the Minister for Justice handles this Bill, but I would have thought that his prime concern would have been with the question of accidents. He is the Minister responsible for the Garda Síochána, the men who are involved in the whole business of accident control and prevention. I would have thought he would have told us the effect this is likely to have on accidents. There is good reason why he did not tell us because the evidence is that the effect will be adverse. The Minister has nothing to say about how this adverse situation will be remedied. An Foras Forbartha carried out an investigation after the introduction of the 1968 Bill and provided figures for two comparable periods between January and mid-February, before and after the 1968 Bill. These figures showed very significant changes in accidents occurring, changes involving a significant reduction in accidents. They were referred to by Deputy Fitzpatrick (Cavan). I will give the exact figures.
The two periods chosen were 7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m., two periods affected by the change in time. A comparison was made between the accident rate in these two periods and the accident rate in the other 18 hours. If we take the figures for the morning and evening period there was a reduction from 291 to 215 in the number of fatal and personal injury accidents. In the 18 hours there was virtually no change—a slight increase from 521 to 530. This suggests that, as a result of the change in time, there was a reduction in accidents from a figure of about 300 on the basis of what happened in the rest of the day; that figure was reduced to 215, a reduction of 85, or almost 30 per cent, in the number of accidents. In the morning period there was a reduction from 95 to 81, a 15 per cent reduction. In the evening period there was a reduction from 196 to 134, a 32 per cent reduction. These figures are significant. The degree of confidence in the figure is 99 per cent upwards, which is a very high confidence limit indeed for any statistical comparison of this kind.
The figures for child accidents—these are not figures for children going to school because they are not broken down in that way; the actual number is statistically small, though humanly and tragically large—cannot be regarded with the same degree of statistical confidence but, nonetheless, I will give them because they confirm the trend indicated. In the morning period the number of accidents was reduced from 19 to 11, despite the fact that conditions were more hazardous but, because of the effectiveness of the preventive measures taken, children wearing arm bands and so on, there was an actual reduction and the Government are to be congratulated on having taken such effective preventive measures. In the evening period accidents fell from 49 to 35. In the other 18 hours there was a small drop of 9 per cent, 80 to 73. Had that small reduction applied in the morning and evening periods the number of accidents would have been 58. It was actually 46. There was a significant reduction here; I should not say "significant" because that has a statistical meaning. There was a reduction much greater than that which occurred in the other periods of the day, not big enough to be statistically significant but indicative of the trend and in line with the general trend in accidents over those periods. It seems to me, therefore, that the legislation introduced, despite the fears mentioned, in 1968, had the effect of reducing the accident rate significantly.
I would like to hear now from the Minister what he proposes to do to deal with the very serious situation which will be created by this Bill, reverting to conditions involving darkness earlier in the evening when people are tired and more accident prone, to try to ensure that accidents do not rise sharply to the level at which they were before the 1968 Bill was introduced. If the Minister feels it is economically imperative that we should follow Britain backwards and forwards, then he has a duty to take steps to prevent an increase in accidents which, on the figures involved in a six-week period alone, could result in an increase of something like 85 casualties. The Minister has a duty to take some action to prevent these. If, in six weeks, 85 extra casualties could result, then over the whole winter period we would have several hundreds extra killed or injured on the basis of these figures, because that was the reduction in people killed and injured following the introduction of the 1968 legislation. What steps will the Minister take to prevent the restoration of the pre-1968 basis, leading to restoration as regards time and as regards accidents involving several hundreds more killed and injured? I emphasise we are talking here of figures which involve such a large change in a figure, which is itself significant, that the figures have a very high confidence limit. It is well over 100 to 1 that this reduction in accidents was attributable to the change in time. That is what these figures mean. Given that kind of situation the Minister has a duty to the House and to the people to say what he will do, if he is going to push this Bill through, to ensure it will not result in the kind of holocaust these figures would indicate.
One curious feature of the Minister's introductory speech is the way in which the speech follows so closely the previous speech. I do not recall any precedent for a Minister making two speeches on opposite things and using exactly the same format and language in both cases. The two speeches are textually the same speech with the figures reversed. I will show this paragraph by paragraph. This is an unusual method of writing speeches. The same speech does and one merely substitutes the opposite figures to say the opposite thing. At column 1628 of volume 235 of the Official Report the Minister for Justice said:
The views of interested organisations and individuals on this subject were invited several months ago when the British decision was known.
The wording is played around with a little this time and a certain imagination is shown in the order of the words. The reference to the British decision comes at the beginning of the sentence this time and I quote:
When the British decision to revert to Greenwich mean time for part of the year had been taken, bodies and organisations...
It was "organisations and individuals" last time.
... that might have an interest in the matter were consulted by my Department as to whether the law should be changed to permit of this country's synchronising with Britain, and the public were invited to express their views also.
The next sentence in 1968 was:
The vast majority of the organisations, which included industrial and employers' organisations, chambers of commerce and semi-State bodies, were in favour of the adoption of the same system of time as Britain and Western Europe.
This time the majority has changed from being "vast" to being "great":
The great majority of the bodies and organisations that were consulted, which included the major State-sponsored bodies...
They seem to feature in both, they are the most important.
... were in favour of our preserving parity with Britain.
In 1968 we were told:
About 130 letters were received from individuals, of which about 70 were in favour of the European system.
This time the Minister states:
Slightly more than 300 private persons gave their views on the matter in letters to my Department. There was a fairly even balance as between those in favour of and those against a change to preserve parity with Britain, slightly more than half being in favour.
Whatever the proposition there is always slightly more than half in favour if it is a Fianna Fáil proposition except when there is a referendum when it is slightly less than half. In 1968 the Minister said:
In the circumstances, it seems fair to deduce that the weight of opinion is in favour of the Bill.
This time the Minister said:
The Government are satisfied that the weight of representative opinion...
It is not just "opinion" this time, it is "representative opinion".
... is in favour of our keeping in line with Britain.
As one goes through one can see the phraseology is the same throughout. The last sentence in the Minister's Seanad speech last time is almost identical with the Minister's last sentence this time. The Minister said today:
This is a non-contentious measure which, I am satisfied, has the support of representative public opinion...
In the Seanad in 1968 the then Minister said:
I trust the Seanad will accept this Bill as a progressive and non-controversial measure...
In the Dáil he said:
I commend this Bill to the House as a reasonable measure, taken after public opinion has been tested, and as one which has no Party or political significance.
This is a case of basically the same speech with a variation in language and different figures substituted to mean the opposite. It is a curious way to legislate but it comes from the mentality of doing precisely what the British do, when they do it, without a moment's delay. If that is the attitude of the Government I do not know what the point of having a separate Government is. I understand the purpose of our getting a separate Government in 1921 was to run our own affairs in our own way but in this as in so many other matters such as decimalisation we have to follow Britain slavishly. The British took a decision to stick to the £ and this was regarded by responsible opinion everywhere as a foolish decision dictated by considerations of national prestige because it was a unit so large that the one-hundredth fraction of it is much too big a unit for pricing purposes. In fact, most countries in Europe have units one-tenth that size as a unit for pricing purposes and, in fact, prices on the Continent are measured in terms of these units so that they can be fairly priced by the equivalent of one-tenth of the new Irish penny. This much greater precision in pricing keeps prices down and encourages competition. The British wanted to stick to their sterling £; we had to follow suit because we could not differ from Britain even one iota. On that occasion we could not even have a different decimal point; we could not even have one thousand milles in the £ instead of the one hundred cents, we could not even have a £ which would be one-tenth of the British £. A decimal point is even too much for this Government when it comes to differentiating us in any respect from Britain.
It is difficult to know what more one can say about this legislation. This legislation cannot be justified in 1968 and again today. One is entitled to feel that one Bill or the other was right. I suppose most of us have a vague preference between the two but to contend that both Bills are right and to contend to that effect by using the same language, the same representations and the same groups of people, always with the bare majority in favour of what the Minister has said, is not the way to legislate in an independent country.