Clocks go forward tonight: Shorter Sunday lie-in, but brighter summer evenings are ahead

Clocks go forward tonight, marking the beginning of the spring-summer season, with an hour lost from the Sunday lie-in but brighter evenings ahead. At 1am on Sunday, clocks will instead read 2am as daylight savings time commences. Despite decades of debate, the policy remains in place. The European Parliament voted to end it in 2019, but no further steps were taken to make the change, and none are expected in the short term. Once a cause of household inconvenience as clocks were taken down from walls and wound on, many devices will now reflect the time change automatically. READ MORE However, while phones and laptops will not need any extra attention, some digital clocks on devices such as alarms or thermostats may not necessarily shift by themselves. Ireland shifts at the same time as the UK and Portugal, which are in the same time zone, and as the rest of the European Union, which is mostly an hour ahead and will remain so. However, the clock changes on a different day in much of North America, where they have been on daylight savings time since mid-March, and in Australia and New Zealand, where the change as they head toward antipodean winter will come in April. The majority of the world – China, India, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa – does not change at all. Ireland has observed daylight savings time since 1916, with a short break between 1968 and 1972. Surprisingly, the idea of changing the clocks has a direct link to Coldplay. William Willett, a British developer, tirelessly promoted the idea in the early years of the 20th century, self-publishing a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight and winning some parliamentary support. He is the great-great-grandfather of Chris Martin, the band’s singer. It was the arrival of the first World War and the need to save fuel used for light and heat that pushed the idea over the line, but Willett did not live to see it, having died of influenza in 1915. Irish MEP Seán Kelly is the chair of the European Parliament’s Working Group on the Biannual Clock Change, and has spent years campaigning to stop the shift. “This Sunday we should put the clocks forward one last time and leave them there for good,” he said during the week. “People love the longer evenings, the extra daylight and what we fondly refer to as the ‘grand stretch in the evenings’. “It lifts the mood, it gets people outdoors and the benefits for everyone in terms of both mental and physical health are undeniable.” He called for the issue to return to the political agenda. While sticking to one time appears to have political and public support, there are concerns about changing without others following suit, especially Northern Ireland. “If all the countries in Europe, the UK and the island of Ireland jump together we would have a good chance,” minister of state Frank Feighan said in 2022.