Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

I congratulate our former colleague Catherine Connolly on her inspiring win after her presidential campaign. I wish her all the very best in her upcoming term as Uachtarán na hÉireann and our tenth President.

I welcome the opportunity to speak about this Bill. It is one of significant consequence, not only for our energy system but also for our economy, environment, society and country more broadly. It deals with one of the most crucial challenges we face now and in the near future, namely, how we generate, deliver and pay for the energy that powers our homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and industries. How do we keep the lights on, and how do we do so in a fair and sustainable manner that ensures affordability for Irish consumers? Ireland’s energy landscape is being reshaped more dramatically now than at any point in our history, or at least since the ESB was established. We are living through a profound transition, trying to decarbonise our electricity system, at a time when the UN is saying we are on track to miss our target of limiting the rise in the global temperature by 1.5°C. We are trying to decarbonise while electrifying heating and transport and integrating massive new volumes of renewable generation, all while maintaining security of supply and trying to ensure sustainability and affordability for Irish households are paramount. This is no small task, and in that context this Bill has an important role. However, the Bill also has serious gaps in oversight, fairness, environmental protection and, crucially, managing the enormous energy demands from data centres that we need to address. I will return to those topics.

The Bill amends the 1954 Act to give ESB Networks greater borrowing and investment capacity, increasing the statutory borrowing limit from €12 billion to €17 billion. It also authorises €1.5 billion in direct Government equity investment over the next five years, between 2026 and 2030, which is of course very welcome. The Government’s stated aim is to provide the legal and financial framework for upgrading and reinforcing Ireland’s electricity network to support the roll-out of generation, new housing, electric vehicles and climate adaptation works, particularly to ensure resilience against storms and other severe weather events.

We have seen the huge damage that storms have caused in recent years. Quite frankly, we were not prepared for them. They have been hugely disruptive, particularly in the case of Storm Éowyn. As we all know, lives have tragically been lost in recent memory. All this is happening at a time when electricity demand is growing rapidly. By 2030, Ireland’s total demand could rise by as much as 40%, driven by the electrification of heat and transport, population growth and, as I will emphasise later, the astonishing surge in data-centre consumption.

This is not a minor technical amendment; it is a strategic investment Bill that will determine where the State places its financial and infrastructural priorities for the rest of this decade. Therefore, it deserves a high level of scrutiny. I will begin with the positive elements. The Bill is an acknowledgement that our electricity grid is under severe strain. Much of our network was designed for a very different era, namely, one of predictable demand and centralised generation. Today, we have decentralised renewables, fluctuating generation and new kinds of load. Our grid was never built for this complexity. By increasing ESB’s borrowing limit and providing direct equity from the State, this Bill allows essential investments in transmission and distribution. That must include the construction of new substations, the upgrading of lines and the replacement of tens of thousands of poles and cables. It is not necessarily the most glamorous of work but it is critical to keeping our energy system reliable.

I believe we will have separate legislation dealing with storm resilience. After Storm Éowyn, when over 750,000 customers lost power, it became clear that we could not continue to rely on a brittle network, dominated by overhead lines. I know we are not necessarily dealing with that issue today, but provisions for better vegetation management, undergrounding key lines and improving emergency-response capacity will be welcome and are necessary.

In principle, we also support the aim of giving ESB Networks the financial capacity to invest at scale. Grid constraints are now one of the biggest barriers to renewable energy projects. Developers of wind and solar farms across the country are waiting years for connections because of bottlenecks. Without new investment, Ireland will simply not meet its renewable electricity targets for 2030.

The Bill is timely and motivated by legitimate needs and recognises that grid infrastructure is essential to the green transition. However, a Bill that controls billions of euro in public funds should also control how that money is used, who benefits and what kind of system it builds for the future. On that front, the Bill is somewhat incomplete.

First, there is the question of cost. This Bill involves investment at an enormous scale. Billions in new borrowing and billions more for capital works are required, yet nowhere in the Bill or its accompanying documentation does the Government specify what this means for the ordinary household’s electricity bill. The Department’s press statements refer to competitive borrowing rates and long-term benefits but, in plain English, that means the ESB will take on more debt, and that debt will ultimately be serviced through network charges – charges paid by households, schools, businesses, hospitals and so on. Some analysis has suggested that the proposed upgrades could increase bills by approximately €80 per household per year. That may sound modest to some, but for families already having to choose between heating and eating, it is not so modest at all. What are households getting for the extra charge? They are not getting cheaper electricity, at least not in the short term. They are being asked to fund long-term infrastructure that will primarily enable new industrial and commercial growth. At a time of record energy poverty, where over a quarter of households have fallen into arrears in the past two years, that is deeply problematic. A modern electricity system must be just as well as sustainable.

We need to consider establishing more explicit consumer-protection mechanisms that may include, for example, mandating the CRU to publish an annual affordability impact statement outlining the cost effects of this investment and requiring measures to offset any regressive impacts.

More broadly on the issue of consumer costs, we need to seriously consider ways of reining in energy companies and rethinking the deregulation of the energy markets. I have spoken about this previously. There are ways of going about it, such as carve-outs and EU rules, that I have outlined in this House previously. The ESB is in a somewhat unique position given it is a State asset and a former monopoly provider. Under section 21 of the 1927 Electricity Supply Act, which established the ESB, the ESB’s obligation was to charge at “such rates and on such scales that the revenue derived in any year by the Board from such sales and services together with its revenue (if any) in such year from other sources will be sufficient and only sufficient (as nearly as may be) to pay all salaries, working expenses, and other outgoings of the Board properly chargeable to income in that year”. In other words, the original mandate of the ESB was non-commercial, and it remained so for over 70 years. That provision was repealed by section 9 of the 2001 Act, which gave the ESB its commercial mandate. Can anyone really argue that there has been a step-change improvement for customers as a result of this commercialisation?

There are also the issues of accountability and oversight, or the lack thereof, in the Bill. The Bill substantially increases the ESB’s borrowing powers but adds no new reporting requirements. That is not particularly good legislative practice. If a private company raised its debt ceiling by €5 billion, shareholders would demand rigorous scrutiny, yet here the shareholders, so to speak – the people of Ireland – are being asked to sign a cheque and just hope for the best. We need clear lines of accountability that could include annual reporting to the Oireachtas, for example, not necessarily just vague assurances from press releases. We need independent audit mechanisms that track project performance, delivery timelines and cost efficiency. There are over 500 capital projects planned under the investment programme. Which will be prioritised? On what basis? Who decides?

How will we in the Dáil be informed if projects go over budget or fall behind schedule? We have seen in other instances, like the new national children’s hospital, that we only learn of budget overruns and delays because they appear in the headlines. The Bill should, and could, include a new statutory duty on ESB Networks to provide quarterly performances reports to the Minister and the relevant Oireachtas committee outlining progress, expenditure and projected completion dates for all major works above a certain value. That is the level of transparency the public deserves when billions of euro in public money are at stake.

Any investment in our energy network and systems going forward must have decarbonisation and sustainability as its foremost considerations. It is worth pointing out that under the Climate Action and Law Carbon Development Act 2015 and the Climate Action and Law Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, the ESB, as a public body, is required to perform its functions in a manner consistent with our statutory climate objectives. However, in a position paper back in February, the CRU reported its opinion that the current provisions under the climate action Act do not provide a sufficient legal basis to allow it to explicitly mandate specific emissions reductions and offsetting measures, such as requiring that connection applicants put in place arrangements to ensure that emissions associated with the demand connection are fully abated from the time of that connection or on a set trajectory. That position might be unique to the CRU as a regulator in terms of the compliance obligations it can impose on third parties, or there may be similar problems with the enforceability of the climate change objectives as it applies to other State agencies and bodies. I hope this is something the Minister will check. In any case, given the salience of decarbonising our energy system in our fight against climate disaster, there should be the strongest obligations on the ESB to live up to its requirements under the climate Acts. I tabled an amendment to that effect but unfortunately, it has been ruled out of order. Nonetheless, I will reiterate that the ESB’s paramount consideration must be the performance of its functions in a manner consistent with the climate Act.

As with all matters relating to our energy supply and national grid, perhaps the most urgent issue, and the elephant in the room, is data centres. This Bill completely ignores the single biggest driver of electricity demand growth in Ireland today. It is silent on the issue of data centres despite the fact that their impact is overwhelming the very grid this Bill seeks to reinforce. That is pretty unbelievable. Last year, data centres accounted for 22% of Ireland’s entire electricity supply. EirGird projections suggest that, without intervention, this figure could rise to 30% by 2030. To put that into perspective, one sector, serving a few dozen multinational corporations, could soon consume nearly one third of our national electricity output. This is not demand that can easily be curtailed. Data centres operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The consumption is constant and inflexible. It does not dip when the wind stops blowing or shift when the grid is strained. The result is immense pressure on network infrastructure, particularly in the east of the country where these facilities are concentrated. Dublin, already one of the most data centre-dense cities in Europe, is approaching the limits of its transmission capacity. That congestion means a couple of things. First, renewable projects elsewhere struggle to connect because capacity is consumed by non-flexible industrial demand. Second, ordinary consumers face higher costs as new infrastructure is built primarily to serve that demand.

When data centres disconnect from the grid and use their own back-up generation, this back-up is almost always fossil fuel-powered. It is simply not a sustainable solution. Let us be honest: the bulk of this €1.5 billion investment will go towards meeting the needs of large energy users, not households. Yet, the costs are socialised across all consumers. That is not sustainable or fair. If we are serious about a just energy transition, we cannot ignore the imbalance created by this sector. We have to ensure that large-scale users contribute proportionality to the infrastructure costs they generate. The de facto moratorium on new data centre connections in the Dublin region, introduced in 2021, was a necessary stopgap and should be introduced nationally. We in the Labour Party have consistently called for a moratorium on all new data centres but clearly the Government intends on ploughing ahead and green lighting more and more of them.

That being the case, new or expanding data centres should be able to demonstrate access to renewable, self-generated power sufficient to meet their operational load. I have drafted a Bill, which I intend to introduce shortly, to give effect to such a provision. We should also be looking at requirements for all large energy users to participate in demand response programmes, installing on-site storage or flexibility technologies to ease strain on the grid. In addition, we need to explore the introduction of a large-user capacity levy, earmarked specifically to offset household and small business network costs. In our alternative budget, the Labour Party proposed a levy of €20 per MWh on data centres, which would raise over €140 million, and a reform of the PSO to ensure they contribute equitably. If they use disproportionately more energy, they should pay proportionally more. That is basic fairness.

Furthermore, we should be looking at the wider planning framework. I am yet to be convinced that the national energy demand strategy is robust enough in setting out clear criteria for where and how high-energy use facilities can connect. We are essentially building infrastructure blindly without any demand side governance. If we continue on the current path, yes, we might end up with a grid that is stronger but it will be one that is more unequal, carbon intensive and dependent on the very industries that make decarbonisation harder.

I wish to touch on the issue of delivery. The targets are laudable, such as 50,000 pole replacements, 319 km of new underground cables and 70 new or upgraded substations. Targets alone do not deliver progress, however, as we are all too aware. We know from recent experience that large infrastructure programmes often face cost overruns, planning delays and procurement challenges. Global supply chains remain fragile and skilled electrical engineers are in short supply across Europe. If the ESB cannot deliver these works on time and within budget, the benefits to consumers and renewables developers will be delayed and the costs will inevitably rise. It would be prudent if annual delivery plans were required and perhaps an independent mid-term review in, say, 2028 to assess whether the investment programme is meeting its objectives and to allow for adjustments if it is not.

Beyond delivery, we need to ensure we are building the right kind of grid. The 21st century grid must be smarter, not merely bigger. It must be capable of real time balancing, integrating distributed renewable generation and enabling households and communities to produce and store their own electricity. If this Bill becomes only a programme of steel and concrete, with more poles, lines and substations without a parallel investment in smart technology, we will have built yesterday’s grid for tomorrow’s challenges.

There is one other matter I wish to raise. This is more of a procedural matter rather than one relating to the substance of the Bill. It is an insight into how I spent my Sunday night. It is about the lack of a consolidated version of this legislation. The Law Reform Commission, as the Ministers of State might know, does great work in consolidating a lot of our laws, but its resources are limited and it does not provide a consolidated version of the electricity supply Acts. Ideally, all of our legislation would be published in a consolidated format rather than leaving it up to individuals to piece together amendments that may have be enacted separately, sometimes over decades, to understand the current state of the law. The Government should publish consolidated laws for everyone’s benefit, as is done in the UK. It is extremely difficult, even for someone like me who is legally trained, to decipher which parts of an amended Act are being changed for the purposes of reviewing and analysing this legislation. Every Department when proposing amendments to existing legislation should at least provide legislators with that Department’s unofficial consolidated versions of Acts so that we can fully and fairly scrutinise them.

I will provide one small example. The explanatory memorandum states this Bill will amend section 4(4) of the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act 1954, which sets the ESB’s borrowing limit. We are told that this limit is being changed from €12 billion to €17 billion. All of this fine, but the limit set under section 4 in 1954 was £25 million. This was amended by a 1982 amendment Act to a limit of £1.6 billion, but how did it get to the limit of €12 billion? Where do I see that so I know that it is changing? It turns out that the limit in the 1954 Act was amended again and increased to €12 billion under section 22 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act (Amendment) 2021. All I am saying is that, as legislators, we should be able to focus our efforts on looking exactly at the substance of changes to our laws, but we cannot be sure exactly what our existing laws are saying in the first place because they are made up of this mishmash of amendments that have been passed over 70 years. This needs to be made clearer for us as legislators. Aside from us, ordinary citizens should be entitled to see easily and in an accessible and transparent manner what our laws actually are and what their right and entitlements are. This in so many respects is an access to justice matter. There is a need for reform in how we publish our laws. This is something I will raise with the Minister for justice and pursue separately.

This Bill has merit. It recognises real challenges and it provides a framework for investment that Ireland desperately needs, but legislation of this magnitude should be judged not only be what it enables, but what it neglects.

We need to ensure balance between public and private interest, between environmental protection and infrastructure speed, between affordability and ambition and between power for profit and power for people. This Bill will shape our grid for decades to come, so let us not build a grid that serves Silicon Valley better than the homes of counties Dublin, Clare or Donegal.

We must build a system that delivers clean, reliable and affordable electricity for every household, every business and every community in Ireland. That means stronger oversight, explicit and robust consumer protection and respect for the environment. That also means a clear, enforceable plan for managing industrial electricity demand, particularly from data centres. If we make these changes, this Bill can become a cornerstone of a just, resilient and sustainable energy future. If we do not, we risk locking ourselves into a model that is unfair, unsustainable and politically untenable.

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