Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take issue with that. I would have thought that if Ireland is to take a lead, it would be in greening our generation of energy. We are doing that with the ambition the ESB put forward to capture offshore wind and it plays into what Dr. Carton said about the generation of hydrogen at the old Moneypoint facility. That is what I would like to see us do. Whether we are a laggard or a leader when it comes to the use of data, we are such a small country it is unlikely we will convince the rest of the world about the continued demand in the medium term, I would have thought, for the storage of data.

We should consider the recent agenda of greater digitisation of economies. That will require greater capture and storage of data. The digitising of economies will effectively decarbonise to a much greater extent because it removes the necessity for transportation and much more. There was a gap, to some extent, in the presentation in respect of the benefits associated with the storage of data and the enabling of the digital economy, which is in itself positive from an environmental perspective. That is not to take at all from the immediacy of what has been said but if you look at it in wider terms, the benefits outweigh the short-term difficulties in getting us to a point where we are generating electricity in a more environmentally friendly way.