Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

The programme for Government outlines the policy position regarding energy policy, housing policy, foreign direct investment growth and the many other goals and objectives of this Government. It reflects the balance between the many opportunities and challenges facing the country and the actions that will be taken over the lifetime of this Government. It recognises that increased and unprecedented investment and delivery in our grid and expanding our energy generation capacity is critical. While in the near term, already-contracted data centres will be accommodated on the grid for the medium term, the Government has committed to developing a plan that will guide the development of plan-led data centre and larger energy user infrastructure in alignment with our decarbonisation objectives and growing Ireland's knowledge-based economy and that will provide certainty for the sector over the medium term.

Moreover, the electricity system operators, namely EirGrid and ESB Networks, assess the various expected future demands on the system, including in the context of economic and population growth, housing and targets relating to electric vehicles and heat pumps, as part of their network development plans. These plans will form a vital input into system operators' submission to the price review process, which sets out the level of investment required over the next five years. That is price review, PR, 6, which we have already discussed here. The CRU is currently reviewing the proposals from ESB Networks and EirGrid in terms of their investment requirements. The submissions made to the CRU propose a significant uplift to the investment required in terms of distribution and transmission to support the requirements of a growing population and economy. The exact level of this will be part of the CRU's final determination later this year. The programme for Government seeks to address the challenges of balancing energy needs by committing to scaling up investment in critical infrastructure and our electricity grid, which will be advantageous for customers and enhance the data centre and digital economy footprint to support continued foreign direct investment, FDI.

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