Mr. Brendan Tuohy:

EirGrid is working with IDA Ireland but it is a challenge. We have a very close relationship in the sense that these people come in and talk to us. I said the following earlier but I am not sure that the Deputy was present. For some of the new ones, and we will have a different arrangement with them in that they will not be guaranteed the type of power that they are guaranteed at the moment, if they decide to expand, which we want to see, there will be a different contractual arrangement with them.

The challenge we have is that most of these centres are around the M50 in Dublin. The new Celtic interconnector is coming into Cork and will be accompanied by a fibre cable of 24 or 48 fibre pairs. From day one, Deputy Eamon Ryan was very involved in specifying that this innovation should accompany the Celtic interconnector and EirGrid wants to build on the opportunity it presents. For me, the ideal situation would be to see a greater regional distribution of data centres so one does not put all of the pressure on Dublin. I believe one will see a lot of research happening over the next number of years on how best to handle data centres. The positive side of data centres is that one has a static or flat prediction. I mean one can predict when data centres will come on and how much energy they will use. Their energy usage is not like normal daily domestic usage that fluctuates. Can we handle it? Yes. Are we looking to the future? We have been very open with what the numbers are into the future but for that, we will need to have an adequate infrastructure and generating capacity in place before that happens.