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

On the question of jobs, the Minister of State might confirm how many jobs are directly in data centres. Would I be correct in saying that there are fewer than 3,000 jobs in data centres? For a sector that is going to be using 30% of our electricity by 2030, the waste of electricity and water, and the impact that has on housing construction and other issues, is quite incredible. We recently found out that by 2032, 9% of gas demand will be coming from just the 11 islanded data centres that are currently connected directly to the gas network. If the Government grants permission to the two dozen data centres that have applied for direct connection, that demand will quadruple to 36% of gas demand. We are burning fossil fuels directly to run data centres. We are looking at an increasingly privatised energy system where we pay through the nose for data centres to burn gas in onsite gas power plants. That is linked to the discussion we have already had about LNG. This is, of course, likely going to be fuelled by fracked US LNG.

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