Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I would like to quote Moody's Investor Service from two years ago where they commented on the prospect of energy prices rising in Ireland:

The key driver behind this rising demand is the huge electricity appetite of the country’s data centres, estimated to rise to 29% of total demand by 2028, coupled with the ongoing closure of coal, peat and gas plants, which are pressuring reserve margins and could push prices higher.

Here we are with energy prices going through the roof. The international context is also driving this, but Moody's predictions are coming to pass. The consequence will be fuel poverty for many people in this country. A Green Party Minister is presiding over keeping fossil fuel driven electricity generation open to fuel data centres. He is also presiding over the prospect of blackouts in order for the data centres to continue to operate and expand while ordinary people are hit with higher electricity prices that many will be unable to afford.

I will given Members a picture of a data centre because sometimes people cannot picture what a data centre is if they do not live beside one like I do. In a way what is happening is proves the point made in the leaked mitigation strategy report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, which states that the growth model of capitalism is incompatible with avoiding climate catastrophe. We are talking about the supposedly green sectors of capitalism, including Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. The truth is what exists, supposedly, in the cloud has a massive physical footprint. There is massive water usage of between 500,000 and 5 million litres of water a day and massive electricity usage.

Just around the corner from me in what used to be the Jacob's biscuit factory, which employed approximately 1,000 people, there is a behemoth of an Amazon data centre, which probably employs between 30 and 50 people because that is the truth of what data centres employ in general. What is all the activity that is going on that uses the water and electricity? They like to give people the impression that all this is the stuff that makes life better but a large part of it is not. We do not know the exact figure because it is all supposedly commercially sensitive but a significant volume of energy is spent on advertising and, in particular, on algorithms to target people with advertising and create wants that did not exist previously. These do not add to people's quality of life. They do not contribute to a good life for ordinary people. Instead, they are part of a system of surveillance capitalism.

We have to ban data centres. I welcome the motion tabled by the Social Democrats. It would be good to have a moratorium. What has been hinted at is that it would be more sustainable to locate data centres outside Dublin and in the west or midlands. That would not work. Professor Barry McMullin has made the fundamental point that expanding energy usage, which is what data centres will do, at a time we do not have 100% renewable energy is similar to trying to go down an upward moving escalator. We have 11% usage currently that will rise to 30% and we have significant water usage and so on. It is incompatible with the Green Party's climate targets, and with the Government's own climate targets, inadequate as they are, to continue with further data centres. We have to shout "Stop" and, therefore, we have to pass our Bill to ban future fossil fuel infrastructure and future data centres.

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