John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Figures from the IDA Ireland and the company show that close to 9,000 sustainable jobs were created as a result of AWS's investment in Tallaght. There is great synergy going on between AWS and South Dublin County Council in terms of the district heating scheme. We talk about water and I am very conscious of the amount of water. Do we know if data centres must use clean water? To the best of my knowledge, AWS has been investigating the use of brown water to cool data centres. The CEOs of these companies will be sacked if they do not achieve their carbon footprint goals.

One of the final things I will mention is the employment spin-off, which has not been discussed. By the time it is finished in Ireland, all these data centres hope to use and rely on renewable energy and actually give back the grid, which is what AWS is doing with the district heating system that is proposed with South Dublin County Council.

To conclude, and I thank the Acting Chairman for his forbearance, this has to be a balanced debate. There are no good guys and bad guys here. Everybody in this Chamber uses huge amounts of data. We also have a responsibility, as was mentioned by a speaker yesterday, to look at how we can limit our use of data and then perhaps we would not need as many data centres. Let us have a balanced debate on it, however.

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