Mr. Liam Bergin:

To answer the simple one first, on oversight, the Office of the Planning Regulator gives guidance to local authorities about the particular conditions that should be applied to the design of data centres. A significant amount of work has been done on that. The Office of the Planning Regulator would have engaged with bodies such as the SEAI, the Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, on that. There is also an umbrella group for data centres. A significant amount has been learned by the local authorities within the local area structure and from those external agencies. Unfortunately, that is where the simple answers end because then the question is what we need to enable district heating, and that is very complicated. From the local authority perspective, it is an enormous untapped resource for us. We could provide district heating to 1.5 times the number of houses we have in Dublin if we could get it up and running. It is extraordinary. District heating would be preferable, in my view, to air source heat pumps.

There is a significant cross-departmental focus on it. A working group has been established and is working on the issue currently. It will produce a report by October. The work includes listing the bottlenecks, as it were, in the context of providing district heating. Dublin City Council will be providing the heating. Our current work programme suggests that it will be the end of 2025 or perhaps even into 2026 before we will be able to deliver it. However, that will be dependent on a series of stakeholders contributing to the work.

Sometimes there is frustration that the local government sector is moving slowly on district heating in Ireland. It should be noted, however, that the local government sector in Ireland is much more constrained than is the case in Europe. For example, local authorities in Finland have a much wider base of power. It may be the case, for example, that we will need to put in 7.3 km of pipe for the district heating scheme. We do not have the legislative power to open the road to lay the pipe. We would have had that power once a upon a time, before Irish Water was established. We need a whole host of legislative powers to do the work. That is just the legislative side. Due to the fact that district heating is a new technology for Ireland, the SEAI has to decide on the appropriate rating mechanism. For example, a developer who has to meet the requirements of the building regulations to comply with an A rating will have to demonstrate that the district heating meets the requirements. At the moment, we do not have that capacity. Everyone, including the marker, has their part to play in relation to the project. We are a lot closer than people think to delivering it. It will make a massive contribution to Dublin city. I am perfectly happy to share information with the committee. In March we shared a document with the Department detailing what Dublin City Council feels is necessary and what we need from the Department. There are other players that we need to engage with. I am happy to share that information with the committee.