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

I asked the Taoiseach last week about this deal for a data centre from South Korea in Ireland. I was spun a line about fuel cells and so on. The Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, said, "If we can build data centres that are powered by fuel cell technology, initially gas, but in the future hydrogen, then that really does change the dynamic". It is classic greenwashing-speak by the Government, is it not, Taoiseach? The translation is that this new data centre will be powered by burning gas, a fossil fuel. The backdrop to this is the moratorium on new data centres in Dublin because of the huge pressure they are putting on the electricity grid and the fact that we are heading towards 30% of our electricity consumption being used on data centres. A dozen data centres got around that moratorium by connecting directly to the gas grid before the Minister, Deputy Ryan, put a moratorium on that. Since then, data centres have been applying to build their own gas-powered plants. This is part of that, is it not? We have plans to build a data centre powered by a gas-powered fuel cell, which the Minister, Deputy Coveney, hopes can become a template for many other data centres. This is about getting around the climate action plan, is it not, Taoiseach?

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