Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The issue is outside of the remit of the Committee of Public Accounts, but is valid. Concern on the issue of the data centres has surfaced at this committee on a number of occasions recently in the context of the potential problems of overheating the grid, the demands on electricity and the effect on our climate change and carbon reduction targets. It was announced earlier that we did not meet our targets for 2020 even though we were locked down for half the year. The county I live in was locked down for even longer than that because we had a local lockdown as well.

I suggest regarding the specific issue that we write to the Minister and the Secretary General of the Department to raise our concerns as to what the strategy is around it and whether there is oversight of it and ask if it is a case of ad hocdevelopment, where there is no general policy in respect of the centres, and that wherever they pop up they go through the planning process with no account being taken of the greater problem that they may cause in electricity demand and effects in our carbon emissions. Is the Deputy happy with that, which might be more appropriate?