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

The Department of the Taoiseach is responsible for co-ordinating the State's climate action plan which obliges the State to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 but last week he and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine jetted off to South Korea to flog beef exports to that country thousands of miles away while simultaneously signing a new deal for a data centre in this country. Already, data centres swallow up 18% of our electricity consumption and increasingly huge amounts of our water supply while providing very few jobs. Is there any limit to the number of data centres the Taoiseach wants us to have or is Government policy for unlimited growth whatever it takes to pander to big tech? Beef is the most carbon-intensive way of producing protein. Is there any limit to the amount of beef the Taoiseach wants farmers to produce so that big processors and big agrifood companies can make huge profits at their expense? Is Government policy still, despite what is written in the climate action plan, more growth and more profits for big business?

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