Mr. David Hegarty:

We will definitely contribute and engage fully with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications on that. We do not, as of now, have our own circular economy strategy as a Department. It is mentioned in the White Paper and we are working on a number of areas on the circular economy. Particularly, we have responsibility for the eco-design regulation. There is a broader variant of that now being proposed by the Commission. We are leading on the negotiations on that, which would extend it to a wider range of products. We are leading on the negotiations on that at EU level.

We also have some initiatives within our Department in the area of the circular economy, particularly the Irish Manufacturing Research centre, which is a technology centre under Enterprise Ireland. It has a CIRCULÉIRE programme, which essentially brings companies together in a network design to encourage adoption of circular economy practices.

We will not be found wanting in this. We absolutely see its centrality to the green deal agenda, as the Deputy called out, and to the decarbonisation agenda generally. We will work closely with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications on that. We will continue to implement the programmes we already have.

On data centres, Government policy on data centres was set out in a policy statement released in July of last year. Essentially, it acknowledged that there cannot be a digital economy presence without having data centres; they are the factories of the digital economy. Ireland has a strong presence in high technology sectors. We have to be open to having data centres to support those firms. However, it is clear that in the short term, given the constraints on our electricity grid, that the scope for expansion of data centres is very limited. The policy statement set out six criteria that essentially would act as a prioritisation mechanism for deciding which data centres could be considered over the next three or four years. I take the Deputy’s point that beyond that, once we start to see supply of electricity emerge from renewable sources-----