Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not believe it is sustainable, or that it is possible to make it sustainable. If we take the climate crisis seriously, we will not go down this road. It is not in our interest to gobble up renewable energy and water on this scale. Ireland bends over backwards to facilitate foreign direct investment. That is fine; that is a different argument for a different day. This is also a facilitation. No other country in the world will have this level of data centres and facilitation of them, including fast-track planning, strategic development and so forth. Ireland will stand alone in that regard because it is facilitating Amazon, Facebook and all the famous, big, high-tech companies. They are based here already and there is a proliferation of data centres to facilitate them. It is an unsustainable and dangerous road for us to take.

I ask again if the Minister, the Government and the Cabinet will consider removing data centres from strategic development infrastructure so that at least they cannot be fast tracked thorough planning.

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