Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a question on data centres. I am sorry if this has already been covered and I missed it. There was a glitch with my invitation to the meeting, so I was watching it on the public stream and dealing with the IT support team while I was trying to get the problem sorted.

Following on from Senator Boylan's question on the breakdown in the increase of electricity demand from data centres, e-vehicles or heat pumps. I think Ms MacEvilly said that the lion's share is coming from data centres. Can she put a figure on what the lion's share is, please? EirGrid has said that almost 100% of the increase in demand to 2030 will come from data centres and the demand from domestic users will stay flat. At a recent meeting of Kildare County Council where I expressed concern about planning permissions for data centres, I saw a lot of enthusiasm from the local authority towards the data centres. I worry how we will meet our 51% reduction in emissions by 2030. What proportion of the increase in demand will be from data centres and what proportion from electric transport and heat pumps?