Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Central Bank in its latest quarterly report issued another damning indictment of the catastrophic failure of Government housing policy. One aspect of it that relates to this subcommittee is the fact that deficits in water infrastructure are now a major impediment to delivering the volume of housing necessary to address the housing crisis. I wonder if there is any joined-up thinking going on in terms of the enormous volume of water usage by data centres and the proliferation of such centres.

We already know they use up 20% of our electricity, and they are driving up energy costs for ordinary householders, but what about water usage? In Clonee, Meta's data centre, which is only one data centre, uses 2.5 million litres of water per day. This is the same volume of water usage as the entire city of Athlone with 21,000 people. We have 82 data centres in this country with 18 more on the way. Do the maths. If the lack of water is now a major impediment to putting roofs over the heads of people affected by the housing crisis, how on earth are we continuing to allow data centres, which are sucking up vast amounts of the inadequate water resources available to us to make a profit for a tiny number of companies? Is the Taoiseach looking at their water usage and the extent to which it is now an obstacle to us having the water necessary to build the homes we need to address the housing crisis?

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