Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Despite what the Minister says, it appears that there are whisperings that it is not a settled position for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It is understandable that recent reports that Uisce Éireann would be introducing excess-use charges would raise alarm bells. It is an emotive issue for many people, as we in the Labour Party know all too well. As environment spokesperson for the Labour Party, I am of course sympathetic to the argument that we need to curb excess water usage or the amount of water that goes to waste. Water is a precious and finite resource, and from an environmental and climate change perspective, it is important that we protect our water and our water supply. As climate change progresses and accelerates, it will become an increasingly scarce resource, so we cannot treat it like some abundant commodity.

Under the plan published by Uisce Éireann, every household in Ireland would have a 213,000 l allowance and any usage above that, subject to certain exceptions, would face a charge. The average household use is 125,000 l, or approximately 40% below the limit. I find it difficult to believe, based on the figures, that excess use among households is such a widespread issue that domestic charges would ever need to be introduced. Obviously, there will be some people who are wasteful with water but, by and large, I think people are generally conscious of how much they use and do their best to keep their usage to roughly what they actually need. This cannot possibly be a revenue-raising measure. I imagine the amount that would be raised would be little more than minuscule anyway, and it would be far, far short of what is actually required in terms of investment in our water infrastructure.

If this does come to pass, it would be a punitive measure designed to curb excess water use, which I am sympathetic to as a goal. However, if we are looking seriously at conserving water and protecting our supply, the finger is being pointed possibly in the wrong direction. Average water use is 40% below the threshold where these charges would kick in, which tells me that domestic use is not really the issue. Instead, if we are going to levy water charges, we should be levying them where we know that there is a massive level of consumption. I am already on the record regarding my opposition to this Government green-lighting more data centres, due to their enormous consumption of energy, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they produce and the pressure they put on our energy grid. We also need to talk about the huge amounts of water it takes to run them. l am conscious that, like all non-domestic users, data centres are required to pay for the water they use. Given the sheer scale of that usage and the run-off effects in terms of waste water generated and the increasing pressure put on the system by growing demand in this area, I think there is scope for additional levies to be imposed. Let us take the waste water which data centres generate as an example. Of the water consumed globally by Microsoft data centres in 2021, 41% of it went to waste. Granted, it could be returned to treatment facilities, but as far as I am aware, there is no cost associated with that waste water and the additional pressure it adds to treatment facilities. The upshot of that additional pressure is that in cases where the treatment plants do not have sufficient capacity, untreated or partially treated water is released into local water bodies. It is a similar case for Google, where around 27% of the water taken in by its data centres globally was discharged as effluent.

In its 2024 environmental impact report, Google stated that its Dublin data centre withdrew 2.7 million l of water, and in Google data centres globally, water use increased by 17% on the previous year. The company has stated publicly that the expansion of Al will lead to more demand for data centres, and therefore, more demand for water. We are all aware of the growing demand for energy in data centres as well, of course.

There are two salient points here. The first is that all of our climate action plans have been quite clear about the potential threat posed to our water supply and water quality. Climate Action Plan 2021 was perhaps the most explicit in this regard. It suggested that climate change will likely result in:

Increased water demand as a result of the increased frequency of heatwaves, leading to further strain on water transmission and distribution networks, as well as on supply (abstraction and storage).

The second point is that Uisce Éireann's national water resources plan notes that nearly 60% of our water resource zones are in deficit and cannot provide reliability to customers in normal circumstances. That number increases to 67% of water resources in winter conditions and 79% in drought conditions. What I am trying to get at here is that data centres are taking huge amounts of water out of a system that is not only facing serious threats as a result of climate change, but is also struggling currently to provide sufficient reliability. It is in that context that we need to be looking at some sort of additional levy on the high-use consumers, based on the polluter pays principle. This should go beyond some punitive measure on ordinary people and actually contribute to further investment in our network of pipes, investment that is desperately needed.

The small number of household consumers who use excess amounts of water surely pales in comparison to data centres or other high-consuming commercial enterprises like large-scale industrial farming or pharma. In order to address wastewater and improve water conservation, we must sort out the pipe network. It is a genuine outrage that nearly 40% of water is lost through leakages before it ever reaches a tap. I accept that some progress has been made in recent years on bringing that number down. There are complicating factors, but progress has been slow. We must urgently ramp up investment on the delivery of an improved water infrastructure network. As I suggested, perhaps an additional levy on high-consuming commercial enterprises might form part of the funding model.

I will conclude by returning to the main crux of this motion. A large part of the concern around the introduction of water charges was that it would lead to the privatisation of water services. That was never the intention of the Labour Party when we held the relevant brief, but there is public concern in that regard and we acknowledge it. The obvious solution to putting these concerns and the issue to bed is to hold a referendum to enshrine water resources and infrastructure in public ownership. In 2016, the Labour Party introduced a Bill to the Dáil to give effect to that, as well as to ensure gas and electricity transmission and distribution networks remain in public ownership. That remains our position. I urge the Government to seriously consider such a referendum. It may well be the case that the Government has no intention of introducing water charges, which we would welcome, or of privatising water resources and infrastructure, as we have heard, but there is sufficient doubt and scepticism about that. The introduction of domestic water charges is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. The elephant in the room is data centres and other large commercial businesses that put serious pressure on water security. That is where we must look if we are ever to apply something along the lines of a polluter pays principle.

See this speech in context