If I could give more than one Thumbs Up to this, I would.

A fair criticism. Question rephrased.

Donal: An introduction to Dublin Mean Time: http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/turning-back-the-clock-to-dublin-mean-time-2011-03/

As for the arguments for each case: we try to offer each in a nutshell in the body of the poll…

Sorry – that came across as rather curt! I should have added that if we were to give an exhaustive list of arguments for either side, we could (legitimately) be accused of trying to skew the vote to either side. We give a general nutshell for each case, but to do any more would (I think) be influencing the outcome.

In this case, as above, the individual options are:
- Status quo: It’s what we know – better the devil we know, etc
- Sticking with summer time: more daylight at night means lower energy consumption
- Sticking with winter time: the mornings are always brighter, which is better from a safety point of view (children going to school, commuting, etc etc)

Eoin – Is there not something to be said that for 217 days of the year, we’d have to put those lights on for an extra hour? This morning – the darkest morning we’ll have under summer time – it was fairly bright by 8am. From the point of view of children getting to school and the likes, we could probably manage.

What makes winter time the “correct time”?
It was initially chosen quite arbitrarily based on the working practices of the day. A working day that involved local people in the same area and had no expectation of same day (not even considering same minute) communications with locations in the same country.
Today a time schedule that suits the practices of our day where there is a greater emphasis on doing business with our European neighbours and using the evening leisure time for sporting and other activities (many of which benefit from having daylight) over the past practices which emphasised the morning and dawn in particular as the start of the day. The summer time schedule seems to fit this requirement better.

@Jeremiah – What makes winter time the “correct time”?

“Mean time” means the average (mean) time based on the passage of the sun through the sky. GMT is the natural time in Greenwich because it makes the clock, on average, say 12:00 at midday. In Dublin, the natural time would be slightly “behind” GMT.

The only thing that’s based on out-dated assumptions of working practice is the idea that the only way to get people out of bed earlier in the morning is to tell them to set their clocks an hour fast. Why not just let people get up as close to dawn as they feel like, work a sensible shift, then enjoy the evening?

Yip – UTC is what Ireland’s current ‘winter time’ is.