Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. I have a couple of comments. I welcome the fact that the project seems to have worked well. We hear a lot about public sector projects and about the ones that do not work well but this one seems to have come in on time and on budget. It is very positive that the data will be located in Ireland. It is very important that the State has control of its own data because this is an issue for international data centres and jurisdictions.

With regard to policy, I support data centres. We all use our phones every day and they run off services based in data centres. The Government can take a good lead here with respect to renewable energy. That is number one. It should lead out on data centres transitioning to long-term sustainable sources of renewable energy. The CRU's view is that Dublin is constrained. There is a long-term opportunity to distribute data centres around the west of Ireland in particular where there are renewable energy opportunities in the form of offshore, which is not that well developed but it will get there. It distributes economy activity.

See this speech in context