Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

We can see that this Bill limits itself solely to changing the corporate arrangements of Ervia and Gas Networks Ireland. It is a missed opportunity on many levels. Not many people are aware that semi-State bodies like Gas Networks Ireland, Dublin Bus, the ESB and Coillte are not legally subject to the State's emissions reduction commitments under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. This Bill was an opportunity and still is an opportunity to legislate to ensure that Gas Networks Ireland and other semi-State bodies are brought within the scope of the climate action Act. It is a very deliberate loophole, a mile wide, that they are not included.

Related to this, the current Bill has nothing to say about the climate obligations of Gas Networks Ireland. It has nothing to say about its recent proposals to the CRU to make more than 17,000 new connections to the gas network in the next five years. What impact will all of these new connections have on our emissions targets? Every new connection means locking in fossil fuel use for decades. Gas Networks Ireland should not be increasing the number of connections to the gas network. Instead, it should be working to reduce them massively and then eliminate them entirely. Research from University College Cork has found that in order to meet our carbon budgets, gas demand in 2040 must be reduced by 93% compared to the current rates in the power sector, by 85% in the residential sector and by 67% in enterprise. Why, then, are the Government's own retrofitting programmes locking people into fossil fuel use? Almost all of the homes given new boilers under the free better energy warmer homes scheme in the first half of this year had oil or gas installed. These boilers will be burning fossil fuels for at least the next 15 years.

The new connections that Gas Networks Ireland is proposing will include 14,600 new domestic connections and 2,629 industrial and commercial connections. How many of those connections will be data centres? Faced with a moratorium on connection to the electricity network due to the massive pressure they are placing on our electricity supply, forecast to be 30% of all our consumption by 2030, many data centres have turned to connecting directly to the gas network. They are cutting out the middleman in terms of burning fossil fuels to create electricity to power data centres by going directly to burning fossil fuels to power such centres. Last year the Minister wrote to Gas Networks Ireland asking it not to sign any more contracts to connect data centres powered by on-site fossil fuel generation. Gas Networks Ireland responded by saying it is mandated under the gas Act to supply connections requested by third parties. The Government, and us as a Dáil, should amend the gas Act to ensure that no data centres are allowed to connect to the gas network. The Government has not done that, however. It has not acted. A dozen data centres are in the process of connecting directly to the gas network. Microsoft is building a €100 million, 170 MW gas power plant in Grange Castle. Shame on the Government for failing to stop this. It seems that nothing is more important to this Government, including the Green Party, than sucking up to big tech and big multinationals. The data centres they dump here barely create any jobs and are nothing but a burden on our energy system and our water supply. People Before Profit has introduced a Bill to ban data centre construction and will continue to campaign for this because it is necessary if we are going to meet our climate targets.

We will also propose amendments to this Bill on Committee Stage to oblige Gas Networks Ireland to reduce the number of connections to the gas network, to refuse connections to data centres and to plan for the orderly wind-down of the gas network as soon as possible. The best way to do this would be as part of a fully renationalised, publicly owned energy system, operating on a not-for-profit basis, that can plan for a rapid and just transition to 100% low-cost renewable energy. This would tackle the climate and cost-of-living crises simultaneously. Unfortunately, the neoliberal capitalist ideology of this Government, again including the Green Party, prevents it from considering the radical ecosocialist measures that are necessary to prevent climate chaos and to stop the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on ordinary people. If we are to stop climate change, we need a left-wing Government that is willing to take on big business and the big polluters to bring this about, not a timid Green Party in coalition with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that is missing opportunity after opportunity to take action on the climate crisis.

See this speech in context