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

What will it take for the Government to recognise that inviting in big tech to set up as many data centres as they want, to use huge amounts of electricity and water, is simply not a sustainable policy? The Government is now being warned by officials in the Department of enterprise that this is not sustainable. Colm McCarthy has said the data centre boom is using up the entire bonus to emission reductions that would otherwise be under way as wind and solar renewables are deployed. The Minister has been warned there will not be enough renewable energy to meet demand from data centres. We have more data centres per capita than anywhere else in the world. We have 82 at present and we will head towards having more than 100. They provide very few jobs and use up one fifth of all our electricity. If we continue to add more and more electricity demand in the form of these data centres, we will not achieve a shift to renewable energy. When will the Government recognise this?

See this speech in context