Mr. Jim Gannon:

There were two main thrusts to the Deputy's question. I will be happy to come back to it again, if she requires anything further. The directions provided prior to Christmas were a security of supply measure in the main. This was to ensure electrons would continue flowing and that should data centres connect to the system they would be able to manage that and offer the system some mitigation for the demand they brought to it. It was a security of supply measure as distinct from a carbon measure, if I can put that way. The primacy of security of supply was there in line with our legal mandate. There are some considerations around that where we had a certain expectation, through dialogue with the market and our own observations, that carbon pricing would drive people towards lower carbon options, as would the planning system aligned with national policy, in addition to significant internal pressures in many organisations that drive them towards lower carbon solutions with regard to their own corporate targets. That is where our expectation would have been in place.

On the demand expectation from data centres, in the main body of the paper we discussed the estimations EirGrid put in place for data centre demand and the fact data centres are unique in how they bring their demand to the grid as a single industry. Separately, it would have been those considerations unmitigated. We put assessment criteria into the paper in order that should data centres be connected to the grid, they could bring certain mitigations and have dialogue with the distribution system operator to bring mitigations to bear on that demand. I believe there is a difference between what EirGrid could pose in terms of a risk and challenge if demand was unmitigated, but the assessment criteria we put in place gives EirGrid and ESB Networks the ability to mitigate that security of supply challenge as the demand comes online.

We have stated that we still reserve the right to bring a moratorium to bear on the data industry should that be required. As part of that decision, we have requested that EirGrid reports back to us periodically on the effectiveness of the measure to see whether it needs to be tweaked and ratcheted up or whether we are comfortable with the mitigation measures and the effect they are having.