Better than sunset at 4:30pm.

you're lucky, it is 3:30pm in Finland. Dusk at 3pm. Up north it is even worse, although they've got the Borealis and usually snow.

Just checked my weather app and yup, sun rises at ~10am and sets ~2pm here in northern Finland

A bit difficult to fulfill that sunlight exposure every morning.

One element in timezone decisions is that kids should make the trip to school in daylight. But that is futile in Finland. Today's sunrise in Helsinki (very south) is nearly 9 o'clock.

Winter and latitude, not longitude should of course guide the selection. Dublin today, Nov 30th, marks the start of the 6 week period where daylight is less than 8 hours, IMHO only wintertime (UTC) makes sense here. Oddly IST, Irish Standard Time and legal time, is UTC+0100. Sticking with IST all year round means 10:00 sunrise in late December for the north-western most parts of the country (Belmullet, for example).