Change your clocks - Irish summer time begins

The clocks go forward on this weekend marking the beginning of summer time in Ireland.

The clocks go forward at 1 am to 2 am on the last Sunday in March which this year is March 30. Daylight saving time (DST) – lasts until the final Sunday in October, when the clocks go back an hour.

Early risers will notice darker mornings immediately after the March change, while evenings will be lighter as the sun sets later.

The time change was not introduced to benefit farmers. It was first proposed by inventor William Willett in 1907 who is great-great-grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin.

He published a pamphlet called The Waste Of Daylight, which outlined his frustration with not getting the most out of summer days. He initially proposed that clocks jump forward by 80 minutes in four steps in April and reversed the same way in September.

The first country to adopt DST was Germany in 1916, during the First World War.

Dr Jeffrey Kelu, circadian rhythms expert at King’s College London, says there can be a number of arguments for DST.

He told the PA news agency: “I think there are some suggestions that there is less crime because more people are out there in the evening and it is harder to commit crimes.

“Also there are fewer traffic accidents because there is more light and people can see the traffic conditions more clearly. But there are conflicting studies.”

People are also in favour of clocks going back due to the increased daylight in the morning, which can lead to higher levels of productivity.

Dr Kelu said: “The circadian clock regulates our physiology and metabolism, and we know that extreme cases such as shift working, causing circadian misalignment, will lead to increased risk in metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes.

“We believe that even for daylight savings time, the changing of the clock would be affecting health in some sense.

We can slowly adjust to it by changing your clocks, for example, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, until the hour changes“The most acute effect would be the loss of an hour of sleep and also the inability to adapt to the new working schedule. So the scientists and communities, as well as the sleep experts, actually suggest removing daylight savings as a whole.

“We think that the morning light is the most important because the morning light will be required to synchronise your body clock with the environment. So after balancing all this scientific evidence, we think that keeping the morning light would be more important and beneficial to health.”

US President Donald Trump posted in December that he wanted to scrap DST.