Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, for the work she has done on this issue and for bringing forward this motion. Both my colleagues, Deputies Whitmore and Gannon, have already put forward a very strong case for this moratorium. It is with a sense of disbelief that we are bringing this forward and having to make these arguments to a Green Party Minister who should know well why the interests of climate change and the people demand a moratorium be put in place on data centres and is put in place now.

I want to focus on one aspect of the cost of the supine facilitation of data centres by the State and I want to talk about its impact on housing and retrofitting of our existing housing stock. As the Government and the Minister are well aware, we have a massive deficit in skilled construction workers, which will put us under huge pressure in building new homes and retrofitting our existing stock. Professor John FitzGerald recently issued a stark warning on this and said that, as a country, we will have to choose between building the new homes we need or retrofitting our existing stock. It is a very stark warning, and it does not come from nowhere. It comes from a situation in which we have massive neglect of apprenticeships for skilled workers in construction. We are at about 10% of apprenticeship levels compared with 2004 in key construction and wet trades. The Government projects we need 27,000 additional skilled construction workers just to meet our existing needs.

What has this got to do with data centres? Data centres are pulling skilled construction workers away from retrofitting our existing housing stock to meet our climate change targets and from building new homes. We need those skilled construction workers for those key tasks of retrofitting and building new homes. That is the choice the Government is making here. Let us be clear: the Government has chosen data centres. Think about what a data centre is. It is where you holds content from social media and websites, such as photos of buildings and homes. The Government is prioritising the electronic storage of photos of homes and buildings across the world over and above meeting our needs for skilled construction workers to build actual homes in Ireland and retrofit our existing stock to meet our climate change targets.

That is absurd. It is ludicrous. We should not have to tell a Green Party Minister about the Government's prioritisation. It makes no sense at all. Let us meet our housing needs first and the need to retrofit existing housing stock, and then we can look at data centres. We already have far more than our fair share of data centres in Ireland and it is not the case we need to do more in that regard.

I do not think the electorate will thank the Government for its prioritisation of this issue and for ignoring the big deficit we have, for example, in skilled construction workers. A 2019 study by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland showed that the biggest obstacle to the construction output is skills shortages and that is before we expand the retrofitting programme that needs to be done. A 2020 survey of skills showed that 80% of surveyors reported an undersupply of skills across most construction trades and professions. That is before we increase the building of new homes or ramp up retrofitting. We must ask what the priority of the Government is. Is it to meet the needs in terms of our climate change targets, housing and retrofitting or is it to continue the supine facilitation of data centres for global corporations and putting those needs ahead of the needs we have as a people? That is not acceptable. It is not too late for the Government to change course, to accept our motion and to agree a moratorium and then to do the detailed analysis my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, has so strongly put forward and that needs to be done.

See this speech in context