Clocks in Dublin and Belfast could be on different times after Brexit

After Brexit the Republic and Northern Ireland could find themselves, for half the year, operating on different clocks one hour apart, if new proposals from the EU Commission to abolish summer-time clock switching are approved.

The Commission yesterday announced that it will propose a directive to member states and the European Parliament to abolish twice-yearly clock-switching following a Europe-wide “consultation process”. The online survey saw 84 per cent of respondents saying they are in favour of putting an end to the bi-annual clock change. More than three quarters (76 per cent) of the respondents consider that changing the clock twice a year is a ‘very negative’ or ‘negative’ experience.

The survey received 4.6 million responses from all 28 Member States, the highest number ever in such a consultation. But two thirds of those were from Germany - some 3.7 per cent of its electorate. Ireland’s survey turnout was as little as 0.24 per cent, while in the UK it was only 0.02 per cent.

Although member states have the sole prerogative to decide what time zone they are part of - there are three in the EU, with Ireland and the UK an hour back from Belgium - the Commission says that the Union collectively has the right to determine whether countries make the summertime switch within those time zones.

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In Ireland, should Brexit go ahead and the UK decides to keep the summertime clock change, clocks in Northern Ireland would go continue to go forward an hour on the last Sunday of March and back one hour on the last Sunday of October. Clocks in the South would remain unaltered, with both parts of the island out of step for seven months every year.

Asked if the introduction of a time border to the island of Ireland is compatible with the EU’s determination in Brexit talks to avoid a hard border, a Commission spokesman would only insist that the two issues are not related.

Observers suggest, however, that the requirement on the North to maintain regulatory alignment with the South in the EU’s proposed but contested backstop provision would seem to imply an obligation on the North to align with the EU/Irish clocks. That would mean the North being out of step with the rest of the UK, a time border down the Irish Sea, surely anathema to the DUP.

The DUPs’ Sammy Wilson said it was “just further proof, as if it were needed, that Brussels is bonkers. It wouldn’t just be a time border, it would be a ticking time bomb under the proposed backstop arrangements which are contested.”

The East Antrim MP, a member of the UK Parliamentary committee on Brexit’, added: “It’s another reason why Theresa May should be putting it up to the EU that there will be no backstop. The Irish government can put the clocks back, or forward, whatever they like. That’s up to them. But we in Northern Ireland will have the same time zone, the same rules, the same customs arrangements and same regulations as the rest of the UK. That’s the bottom line for us.”

Since 1996, all Europeans have been changing their clock forward by one hour on the last Sunday of March and by one hour backward on the last Sunday of October. The purpose of EU rules was not to harmonise the time regime in the EU, the Commission says, but to address the problems, notably for the transport and logistics sectors, which arise from an uncoordinated application of clock-changes in the course of the year.