Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)

I thank my constituency colleague for bringing up data centres and the State data centre. The programme for Government talks about expediting private wire legislation. As Deputy Ó Muirí just said with regard to the decarbonisation of data centres, as we are all aware, 21% of our electricity is being used by data centres. While other Deputies will attack data centres, there are 53,000 jobs indirectly or directly linked to data centres. I am not going to shout at the Minister of State and say they are using this electricity. We could use the expedition of private wire legislation to allow data centres to create their own on-site energy, as Deputy Ó Muirí said. This would then allow the giant companies to create on-site solar panels or, as the Deputy said, run private wires from other renewable projects. It is important that we do this.

The CRU's announcement three months ago was not welcome and was not in line with the programme for Government. I urge the Government to expedite the private wire legislation to allow us to reach our EU climate targets.

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