Don’t forget, clocks go back one hour tonight TheJournal.ie

A QUICK REMINDER that tonight, the clocks go back an hour.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee reminded the public this weekend that ‘winter time’ officially begins at 1am on Sunday October 25 (tomorrow, technically).

Smartphones should automatically take over the change, but mechanical watches and watches will need to be delayed an hour at that time.

The ‘winter time’ ends at 1 a.m. M. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday March 28, 2021.

The clocks will advance again and we will return to GMT + 1.

Does time change something from the past?

There has been some debate in the EU about whether to eliminate daylight savings time.

In March last year, the European Parliament voted to abolish the seasonal time change, which is based on trying to make use of as much light as possible.

These are the two options:

• If we choose daylight saving time, the time we are in now, it would mean brighter nights, with darker mornings in winter than we currently experience.
• If we choose winter time, the time we are about to change to, it would mean brighter mornings, with darker nights in the summer than we currently have.

Ireland and other member states have a 12-month period to decide whether they will stay in the summer or not. That means when we change our clocks in March of next year, it could be the last time.

There is a very obvious problem if Ireland abolished daylight savings time: what happens in Northern Ireland?

Because the UK is no longer in the EU, if Ireland chooses to adopt the European Parliament resolution, it could result in different time zones on the island of Ireland.

Leo Varadkar said during his time as Taoiseach that he would not want Ireland and Northern Ireland to be in different time zones, which may be enough to ensure that Ireland does not rule out biannual time changes.