Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We want a report. We want to see how data centres benefit and how much additional revenue we would raise by excluding them from these accelerated capital allowances. That is in the context of our wider belief that it runs completely counter to our climate objectives for the Government to continue to facilitate the construction of data centres which are going to suck up enormous amounts of energy from the grid. Estimates vary from 30% to potentially much higher proportions of energy from the grid being eaten up by data centres which have enormous CO2 emissions. We do not think they should gain from these allowances. They should not be encouraged or incentivised in any way. We want to see a prohibition on the further construction of data centres because of the damage they are doing to the environment. That is the context in which we propose the amendment, and we seek that the Minister would look at reporting on the benefit revenue-wise of excluding them from the accelerated capital allowances in section 21.