Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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Does the Minister have any concerns about the strategy of attracting as many data centres as we can? We keep adding more and more of them to the grid. They are now accounting for 20% of our total electricity consumption. They are heading for 30% by 2030. Does the Minister have any concerns about that strategy in the context of the explosion of AI? It was not really part of the discussion when this strategy was developed. It is reported that AI will double data centre electricity consumption between now and 2030. Ireland, as a data centre capital, is going to be disproportionately hit by that.

There have been a number of worrying reports recently. Bloomberg has said it will open new gas power plants in the US to fuel this AI. A report in The Guardian the other day discussed how Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are systematically under-reporting the amount of carbon emissions as a result of their data centres. Has the Government done any work to check that our assessment, in terms of the emissions from Amazon or wherever else, is accurate?

If we are going to massively expand energy usage, it will be a threat to the achievement of a rapid transition globally. An AI Google answer takes ten times more energy than a regular Google answer. You may have seen a suggestion that a Google search for "smoking while pregnant" will result an AI answer saying that doctors recommend smoking two to three cigarettes a day while pregnant, so it is less accurate. People find Google less and less useful because of this AI but it is using more and more energy. Every picture that is made for useless nonsense, using huge amounts of energy, is a problem. We are disproportionately affected by it. Does this give the Minister cause for concern? Does it cause the Minister to support our position that we need to stop building future data centres until we are able to get to a zero-carbon position?