Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that data centres and their impact might be abstract. They are out of sight and the industry and Government might hope that keeps them out of the public mind and out of this Chamber for debate, but it is an urgent issue and one that can illuminate where this Government stands on climate action and just transition and whether it stands in opposition to vested interests. It is an urgent conversation that needs to be had, and I thank my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, for her work in bringing this Private Members' motion forward.

When we talk about the digital economy, the cloud and big data, we are often not thinking of the physical world, and that is purposeful to keep it as abstract as possible, but what is not abstract is the feeling the Government is prioritising the needs of multinationals over everyday citizens. This is an all too familiar feeling. Data centres, though out of public view, are not invisible and they are not benign or neutral entities. They are unapologetically energy intensive creatures and the business model of the companies that record these data centres is based on people consuming more and more data, meaning the need for more and more data centres.

It would be remiss if I did not acknowledge just what data are being stored in these centres. It is our data and our information, what we google, our old Facebook posts, and what we decide to remove from our online shopping baskets before checkout - the millions of pieces of data we unknowingly give away but are highly valued and profiteered from. It is energy sapping on a human level. Many centres are dedicated to this and it seems wholly undemocratic that profit from data is being valued more than our citizens and our communities.

We have heard of the massive amounts of energy required by data centres to function. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, believes it may not be possible for Ireland to meet the demands of such goals due to the exponential growth in the data centres and the lack of intervention from Government. There are more than 70 data centres in Ireland, with approximately 25% of all centres in Europe now based in Dublin. EirGrid warned earlier this year that data centres have the potential to take up to 70% of national power by 2030, based on the current connection requests.

Over the past four years, EirGrid has seen an annual increase in usage by data centres of approximately 600 GW, which is equivalent to the addition of 140,000 houses, and over the next ten years total electricity demand is to increase between 19% and 50%. This is just the energy requirements and ignores the massive amount of land and water also required by data centres to function. The cooling systems required for data centres to operate require between 500,000 and 5 million litres of water per day; 2.6 million litres per day are used in Athlone.

The allure and shine of the magic of large multinational companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google has gone without question, interrogation or analysis. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". It is a quote that often accompanies the latest tech product or new Apple release, but it is also the Government's policy here. How can we sustain the inevitable growth of data centres? What are the effects of this growth? How will the energy required by data centres be balanced against our climate action targets? These are the questions that require robust and detailed answers, and until we have these and the Government starts to see there is no magic here, we need this moratorium.

This week, it was announced that due to energy shortfall in meeting the demands for energy, Ireland will extend the use of older, high-emissions coal and oil electricity plants, which will have dire consequences for our climate action targets. We should not have to tell the Green Party this. Our Government is ignoring these data centres take and is willfully failing to interrogate the true cost of policy, despite the warnings and the current evidence. The IDA has cautioned that our energy supply crisis could result in reputational damage, because you can be sure that once it is evident our grid cannot cope with demand, people will be left in the dark - not the companies, but people. We have already heard about Intel potentially passing on Ireland due to the energy crisis. It will be people who are left in the dark when rolling blackouts hit because of the failure of this Government to act, and that is an all-too-familiar feeling.

This is a pro-people motion. We do not want the scenario in which lights cannot be turned on, kettles cannot be turned on, food cannot be cooked and people are left feeling cold. This is a pro-business motion. We cannot have a scenario, come Christmas or January, in which businesses are once again asked to close their doors because we do not have the energy to keep them open. When the blackouts happen, it will be once again felt that this Government and governments are on the side of big business as opposed to the people.

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