Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The main reason coal use increased is because the price of gas went up so high that coal came in earlier on the merit order. We are also in a very tight situation in terms of power generation, not only because of data centres but also as a result of a variety of other issues.

I attended and addressed at the EPA conference yesterday. I said that, critically, the response is in the establishment of six acceleration teams. One team would work on each of the following: the development of offshore wind; the development of sustainable mobility; the development of heating solutions, some of which were mentioned earlier; the acceleration of a just transition and the statutory commission; the communication of this climate issue; and, most importantly, the examination of how we develop and accelerate a land-use review that optimises matters in the context of rural development, decarbonisation, biodiversity restoration and the reduction of pollution.

We can and will meet these targets. We have to do it not just for the moral obligation and because we have national targets, but also because they are European targets. There are slight variations to different accounting rules, but the basic trend and direction are clear. The European and Irish economies are going green. That has to be done for security, health and environmental reasons, but also because such economies are more stable and represent a better investment. It will take time to ramp up. There are difficulties at local political level when making particular investment decisions. I refer, for example, to decisions relating to reallocating road space, the delivery of the sort of new forestry we need and a range of other matters.

Data centres will have to live within the climate limits. Everyone will. Every Department will have to go to the maximum of the ranges that we set out within the carbon budget this House discussed in the context of the sectoral targets. That is the scale of the collective leap needed. No one is exempt or will have an opt-out. No industry, data centres included, can see its future without living within those limits. I echo what Deputy Leddin said; that cannot be our only focus. We must address, as the EPA did yesterday, the real challenge we have in transport, agriculture and energy use. Transport and agriculture are the ones in respect of which we have to apply political pressure, attention and focus in order to facilitate a switch to a better way, which is what we can do.

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