Hello all,
The database ends Irish summer time in 1925 on 4 October, via the shared
GB-Eire rule. That is right for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but
not for the Irish Free State, which fell back two weeks earlier, on 20
September. The statutory record is clear. Ireland's Summer Time Act,
1925 (No. 8 of 1925) ends summer time after the third Saturday in
September, whereas the UK's Summer Time Act, 1925, which introduced the
October date with immediate effect, did not apply to the Free State.
Ireland adopted the October date only through the Summer Time Order,
1926, whose recital replaces the period fixed by section 2 of the Act
and mentions no earlier order.
Additionally, practice matched statute (although it seems a little too
well ;-). Moving approval of the 1926 order in the Dáil on 24 March
1926, the Minister for Justice said: "Deputies will remember that last
year there was a discrepancy of a fortnight between the termination of
Summer Time in the Saorstát and in Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
The attached patch adjusts the Europe/Dublin zone so that Dublin leaves
summer time on 1925-09-20, along with updating a few links I noticed.
--
Best Regards,
Stan Ulbrych (https://stan.ulbrych.org)
From b1c17c2d8199ea8cd9efb87ac0413cc81aa7e0a4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Stan Ulbrych <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:09:37 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Fix 1925 fallback date in Ireland
---
europe | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
1 file changed, 26 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
diff --git a/europe b/europe
index 0dc31d9d..3f555699 100644
--- a/europe
+++ b/europe
@@ -378,13 +378,33 @@
# as a negative daylight saving time in winter. So, in this database
# IST stands for Irish Summer Time for timestamps before 1968, and for
# Irish Standard Time after that. See:
-# http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1971/act/17/enacted/en/print
+# https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1971/act/17/enacted/en/print
# Michael Deckers (2017-06-01) gave the following URLs for Ireland's
# Summer Time Act, 1925 and Summer Time Orders, 1926 and 1947:
-# http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1925/act/8/enacted/en/print
-# http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1926/sro/919/made/en/print
-# http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1947/sro/71/made/en/print
+# https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1925/act/8/enacted/en/print
+# https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1926/sro/919/made/en/print
+# https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1947/sro/71/made/en/print
+
+# From Stan Ulbrych (2026-09-12):
+# Ireland's Summer Time Act, 1925 (No. 8 of 1925, see above)
+# ended summer time at 02:00 GMT on the day after the third Saturday in
+# September, that is, 1925-09-20. The UK's Summer Time Act, 1925, however,
+# moved the UK's end date to the day after the first Saturday in October with
+# immediate effect, but it did not apply to the Irish Free State.
+# Ireland matched the October date only from 1926, via the Summer Time Order,
+# 1926, whose recital replaces the period fixed by section 2 of the 1925 Act
+# and mentions no earlier order. Moving approval of that order in the
+# Dáil on 1926-03-24, Minister Kevin O'Higgins said:
+#
+# Deputies will remember that last year there was a discrepancy of a
+# fortnight between the termination of Summer Time in the Saorstát and
+# in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As a result of that, serious
+# inconvenience was caused to railway companies, and there was a certain
+# amount of dislocation of postal services in the country.
+#
+# (See: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1926-03-24/18/)
+# So Dublin fell back on 1925-09-20, two weeks before London.
# Rule NAME FROM TO - IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S
# Summer Time Act, 1916
@@ -537,6 +557,8 @@ Zone Europe/Dublin -0:25:21 - LMT 1880 Aug 2
-0:25:21 - DMT 1916 May 21 2:00s
-0:25:21 1:00 IST 1916 Oct 1 2:00s
0:00 GB-Eire %s 1921 Dec 6 # independence
+ 0:00 GB-Eire GMT/IST 1925 Sep 20 2:00s
+ 0:00 - GMT 1926
0:00 GB-Eire GMT/IST 1940 Feb 25 2:00s
0:00 1:00 IST 1946 Oct 6 2:00s
0:00 - GMT 1947 Mar 16 2:00s
--
2.55.0
