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

The signal the Taoiseach is sending is that he does not care about the climate change challenge and about the emissions targets, because we will blow right past them. He does not care. He does not care about the bills that are going up for ordinary people.

He does not care about people who are forced to pay carbon taxes when they have no other way to get to work. He does not care about energy resilience and sustainability when we now have over 20% of our electricity going to data centres. Why? Because big tech says this is how it should be.

I read the Taoiseach's column at the weekend. I listened to him describe it as the equivalent of the industrial revolution. He sounds like a man who has drunk too much of the big tech Kool-Aid. He needs to apply some critical faculties. It is not possible. Currently, over 20% of our electricity is being used on data centres. We are going to go to 30% and then beyond. We cannot go in that direction and meet our climate change targets. It is one or the other. That is why the Taoiseach wants to import LNG. He is also going for fossil fuels.

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