Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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That is absolutely fine. I apologise for coming in remotely.

A lot of the focus has been on the subvention, specifically the detail of the financial aspects of it but perhaps it needs to be looked at in a wider policy context. Could the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, specifically address these issues? If we look to the wider set of policy decisions that have really incentivised the growth in very high energy usage by large energy users, in particular, data centres, in his opening statement the Minister of State talked about how there was an increase. This is a really substantial consequence of this measure where we are looking at an increase of 800 in the large energy users during the period when the subvention was in place. Again, surely that kind of expansion should have triggered a review and a questioning of the appropriateness of the policy. We are also in a situation where our legally binding emissions targets are not being met and 18% of our electricity in 2022 was being used by data centres. Could the Minister of State comment on the wider set of policies? I was disappointed that the Minister said data centres would have to go green or stay off the grid, but that is not enough if we have data centres that are creating their own fossil fuel infrastructure, such as we have seen in Tallaght, where a large-scale gas power plant is proposed to be attached to the new data centre. We have also seen a very strong move by the Government to overturn South Dublin County Council's attempt to say that data centres should not be a permitted development within its development plan.

We have really strong measures that are pushing the idea that data centres should be treated as priority strategic infrastructure. Much as the public paid the cost by way of their electricity bills in the past, it looks like the public will be asked to carry the burden in terms of the management of electricity demand and, indeed, the management of our emissions reductions. That is a real concern. If the public is yet again to subsidise and, in effect, take the hit for these large energy users, what policies are in place to review the different measures being taken to incentivise, encourage and allow them, for example, to develop their own fossil fuel infrastructure? They are in a privileged position in regard to planning decisions and certainly in terms of overturning local development plans. Are there changes coming in that regard? Will we learn from previous mistakes and try to fix some of the other mistakes we are currently making?