Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an important issue because as the Minister said, we will have a huge surplus of offshore renewable energy. At the moment, the other technologies, like hydrogen, are unproven. We cannot risk the longer-term development of the ICT sector, which has been central to our economic strategy for a very long period. We have to manage this sensitively, as the Minister is outlining, because if we allow short-term constraints to result in investment going elsewhere and Ireland's sector being postponed, it will have a huge impact. We have to look at this issue in a very balanced way and I commend the Minister on the sensible approach he is trying to take here. Yes, we have short-term constraints and short-term targets to meet, but we must also make sure that as the previous Taoiseach described it, our moonshot, our opportunity to develop an offshore renewable sector that will mean Ireland is a source of green energy, is not jeopardised. I commend the Minister as this is a sensitive area and he has to be careful and have full consultation and not adopt ab initio assumptions about what sectors can do. We talk about agriculture and it cannot do things overnight. No sector can do overnight what we would like to see them doing by 2030, 2050 or beyond. There should be balance to this debate on the importance of data centres.