Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We can disagree on that. The Minister said they are trying to get the balance right but I would argue that they are not getting the balance right. He talked about the Government statement on the role of data centres but there are no definitive measures in it. It stated, “The Government has a preference for data centre developments in locations" and “The Government has a preference for data centre developments that can demonstrate a clear pathway to decarbonise".

When it comes to data centres being powered by wind generation, on Wednesday the CRU approved grid connection for a wind farm off Wicklow. That wind farm will be off Arklow and it will be for a data centre in Arklow. There has been an agreement between the data centre and the wind farm. When that wind farm was first spoken about a number of years ago, they were marketing it by saying it would provide enough electricity or energy for 830,000 homes - I think that was the figure they gave. Now, it will provide enough energy for one data centre where probably 30 or 40 people are employed.

I get the Minister’s point that it is not just the people employed directly in data centres and that there is obviously a wider indirect benefit, but the question is whether we have enough of the right kind of data centres, and I do not think we do. If I was to ask the Minister where the data centres are, what data they are collecting and who owns them, I doubt he would know any of the answers. I know there are commercial issues, but there needs to be an entity within the Government that knows exactly where all these data centres are, who owns them, how they are run and what is collated and stored in them. Unless you know that information, you cannot figure out how to manage them properly. The fact that a cohesive approach has not been taken by the Government means we are seeing many more data centres in this country than we can meet the needs of now and into the future. I think they will end up taking renewable energy that should be used for residential homes and standard levels of economic growth, not just for meeting the data centre needs from companies that are overseas. Some 30% of our electricity use will be by data centres by 2030, which compares with 3% across Europe. At some stage we have to say that we have far too many and we are taking far too many on board.

There is also the issue that if we cannot provide a secure grid – we have seen this already – we will have companies like Intel saying they cannot invest and create other jobs here because they do not have access to secure energy. That is a real risk. I do not think the Government has done this in tandem and I do not think it has gotten the balance right. It will be a major issue down the road when we realise we will not meet all our renewable energy requirements through wind energy and we sacrificed an awful lot of that to be used for data centres, many of which are not actually giving anything back.