Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come back very briefly on the comments Deputy Matthews made. He is correct about the commentary by the ESRI. If the ESRI looked at a continental European model relating to the introduction of carbon taxes, then its commentary may very well be correct. We need to design carbon taxes that reflect the actual situation here in Ireland. That is not happening and is not being looked at.

Deputy Matthews is right to express concern about data centres, but, as the Minister for Finance and I know, offshore renewables are not going to resolve this issue. It will be a decade at least before there is any significant development in offshore renewables coming onto the grid. The difficulty is that many data centres will be coming on stream in a very short period. Meeting our 70% target will require a trebling in the number of onshore wind farms and a trebling in the size of existing wind turbines. That is if we are going to meet that 70% target based on the current modelling.