Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I just read the Dermot McCarthy report. It gives a good history of how we got to the energy security risks that we had. It was clear that those risks were identified as early as 2017 and it was primarily, even back then, identified that the large energy users such as data centres were going to cause problems when it came to energy security risks. One of the roles of the CRU is to ensure security of supply. This report states that having regard to the pressure arising from the demand from data centres, new conditions for connecting them to the grid, which were introduced in 2021, could have been put in place at the time of the Government's statement on the role of data centres in 2018. Mr. McCarthy is essentially saying that we would not have hit, or had, as serious a security of supply issue with our energy if the State had put in place measures that it knew were going to be required. I see the CRU as central to that. Does Mr. Gannon see it as a failure in the CRU's response that energy risks were identified as early as 2017, yet it took until 2021 before any conditions were placed on data centres to curb their demand? That is a significant time gap. Does Mr. Gannon see that as a failure of the CRU in that role?