Professor Barry McMullin:

Something that has not been mentioned here but I feel I have to mention is that any increase in our energy utilisation in our current situation will adversely affect our energy security exposure. As a matter of current policy, we will significantly increase our energy use in the next ten years by the rapid expansion of the data centre industry in Ireland. There are many good aspects to that sort of development but there has not been nearly enough discussion on the interaction of that with our worsening energy security situation.