Dáil debates

Wednesday, 29 June 2022

EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Bill 2022: Committee and Remaining Stages

 

4:07 pm

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed that the Minister ignored amendment No. 22 and did not address the point I raised. The amendment provides that:

The Minister shall, within 180 days of the passage of this Act, publish a report on the mitigation measures to be taken to minimise the additional impact of intensified data centre activity on the Public Service Obligation levy and network charges for all other electricity customers.

This legislation is taking €40 out of the pockets of every family in this country to pay for the additional electricity required because of the number of data centres connected to our electricity grid. That is on top of the cost that is already there for electricity customers, including families across this country, in subsidising the electricity that is going into data centres.

The Minister is not prepared to address in this House any attempt to alleviate that cost, even though the previous Government took a decision on 7 June 2018 to ensure that would happen. The only answer he can give us here today is, "Well, we are going to carry out a review on that and it is going to be led by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment." I know what the outcome of that review will be. Families will have to dig deeper into their pockets to subsidise the electricity going into major multinational data centres in this country; companies that are quite willing to pay, and capable of paying, for the cost of that electricity. Oh, no, the Government could not ask them to pay for it. Instead, it is saying to families across this country who cannot afford to put food on the table that they should pay an extra €40 for the cost of the electricity going into data centres.

This is immoral and it is a national scandal. I have brought forward two amendments to address it. Amendment No. 22 seeks to deal with the historic electricity that is going into the data centres and which we are subsidising. Amendment No. 9 proposes, as the very least that should be done, that the data centres pay the €350 million-plus it is going to cost, because that is where this electricity is going. It is not going to be used by families across the country. They have not increased their demand for electricity over the past four or five years but they are the ones now being asked to foot the bill for this. It is immoral, it is wrong and it has to be addressed.

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