Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for calling me earlier than expected.

We will support this legislation because it is appropriate that there be legislation to deal with the issue of data centres in particular, to stall the situation and to look hard at where it is going. This week, the Minister with responsibility for energy stated that he could not guarantee that there would not be blackouts this winter. Under those circumstances, it makes no sense to proceed with data centres, which are one of the main consumers of power in our system. No one in the country can understand why we cannot pause and reflect on the situation. If this Bill passes Second Stage, it will go to Committee Stage where we will tease it out and see if there are other issues that need to be addressed. That is how legislation works in the Houses. It is not as if, bang, everything will be over if the Bill is voted through tonight. We all know that it does not work like that and that this will take time and we will need to deal with the Bill in a measured way.

In this country, there is a great deal of politics around energy, so we need to recognise that we must reach a consensus. We have already discovered more oil and gas in the world than would destroy the world if we burned it all. There is no point in looking for more anywhere or taking more out of the ground because doing so would destroy the environment. Instead, we need to come up with solutions. The appropriate solution that we all agree on is that we must do everything we can to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

I welcome the situation in Rochfortbridge where Bord na Móna is talking about building a unit. We need to see more of that happening, but it will take time and does not mean that we should plough ahead with everything else as if the situation will develop overnight.

Something strikes me whenever we speak about data centres and the like. I believe it was 1991 when I bought a home computer. It was quite a while ago and you would want two tables to put it on. It was huge, but it would not hold a fraction of the data held in a mobile phone now. If technology moves so fast, will data centres need to be this size in another ten years' time, will we even need as many or will they be big white elephants in the countryside? This is a point to which we need to give a little thought. The technology involved moves quite quickly.

Technology is also moving quickly in terms of how we develop renewable energy. Solar, wind and so on have come a long distance in a short number of years. If we focus all of the efforts and energies of our society and world capital over the next number of years on investing in and progressing that sector and close off the option of continuing to use fossil fuels, it will force attention, investment and the expertise of all the scientists in the world into ensuring that we perfect renewable energies. This type of Bill is trying to do just that. It is telling people that we cannot continue down this road and that we need to stop and consider other ways forward.

I understand that there is always pressure from industries. I heard people from IBEC and other bodies on radio in recent days saying that we could not close the country down. No one wants to and we are not talking about closing down the country. Rather, we are saying that we have to proceed with caution because we cannot go on as we have been. We all agree on that. In that context, it is clear that we need to apply a moratorium and stop building data centres. We also need to consider how we use gas and oil, because as long as we have it in the background, the same attention will not be put into renewables.

This country banned fracking. We all recognised that fracking for gas was bad for the environment and that we needed to stop it, but if it should not happen here, then it should not happen anywhere. There is no point in importing fracked gas from other countries when we are saying it is not good for the environment in Ireland. Why should we impose something on Pennsylvania or anywhere else around the globe and say that it is okay to use the gas that comes from there but it is not okay to take it out of our own resources? We know those resources exist, particularly in the shale basins in Lough Allen in my part of the world. There are large quantities of gas there, but one would have to frack to take it out. That would destroy the environment, the River Shannon and half the country, yet are we saying that it is okay to take gas from somewhere else? That does not make sense.

We need to use the legislation that we pass to force industry to consider other ways of doing this, to force the capital and expertise of scientists in that direction, and to remove the option of fossil fuels. That is what this Bill is about.

I commend the proponents of the Bill on bringing it forward. Sinn Féin will be supporting it and we implore the Government to support it and to allow it to proceed to Committee Stage where any issues with it can be teased out. As I said, these things do not happen overnight. We have plenty of time to deal with this issue. The truth is that reality has brought us to a situation where we should not be allowing the development of any more data centres in this country. Whatever about Bills or moratoriums to stop it, common sense would tell us that we cannot do that any longer.

See this speech in context