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

We have a different perspective. My optimum solution, and I say this in all sincerity, is that we would improve this situation even more by nationalising energy and running it on a not-for-profit basis. That would help even more. This is the scheme that the Minister is proposing and I take his point about turnover. However, if it was to be based on profitability, it would be entirely reasonable to have a profitability threshold above which a company would not need support. While it depends on where the threshold is set, I do not envisage some of the big employers the Minister mentioned running for the hills if we say that companies will get support when they are below a certain threshold because their existence is threatened, but those whose profits are above a certain threshold can absorb some of the cost because their existence is clearly not threatened. I suspect that the Minister disagrees with me, but I will put the argument in any event.

On the subject of data centres, I fundamentally disagree with the him. I am thinking about the sheer scale of these data centres in terms of their impact on our energy. There was brief talk about how we could have blackouts. If we took out the data centres, that would not have been a threat. That is how much of our energy they are sucking up. Some of the big, mega data centres that are planned for the near future will balloon that even further. Even as we develop our renewable energy resources, they will suck up much that energy. That is a real problem and it is a serious contribution to an energy crisis that is developing. The Minister is understating just how big of a problem they are for us, in particular because of the huge proliferation of them that we have, and we have to address that.

I suspect we disagree but I just wish to mark the issue.