Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Paul Murphy asked about electricity supply. I am glad to say we are in a much better place in the security of electricity supply than we were this time last year. That is down to the extra generation taking place, in both renewable and gas, and the fact that there is a better partnership between EirGrid and the big energy users, including data centres. Data centres can be called on to contribute to the grid because they have generation capacity of their own, particularly when there are issues around supply.

It is rarely part of the debate that data centres can produce their own energy and contribute to the grid and thereby help to solve the problem if there is shortage of supply. We are assured there will not be any red alerts this winter and it is unlikely there will be amber alerts either.

LNG infrastructure is not about data centres but is about the issue of gas supply. We in Ireland are going to need natural gas until at least 2050, if not beyond then. Even if we achieve net zero, we will still use natural gas to a certain extent. We currently only have two ways to get gas onto the island, which are through the UK interconnector and the Corrib gas field. When the Corrib gas field runs out, there will be only one way to get gas onto the island and that is a security risk. We need to do something about that. A number of options are available and we have not made a decision on that yet. Those options include floating LNG, fixed LNG and additional interconnectors to jurisdictions other than the UK.

I heard what Deputy Cian O'Callaghan had to say. It was another example of the selective use of statistics, which we are all guilty of sometimes. He specifically mentioned the ratio of earnings to average house prices and picked 2011 as the base year. If he picked 2007 or 2008 as the base year, he would come to a different conclusion. I encourage him to do the maths in that regard. I will use statistics selectively in respect of people earning their own homes. If Deputy O'Callaghan can do it, so can I. The number of people in Ireland who own their own homes is at a record high of 1.2 million. We know that from the census.

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