Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)

Most people will know, and the people in the Gallery will know, that the need for the grid upgrades is driven in part by the growing energy demands of data centres, whose usage has increased by 400% since 2015. Therefore, all the extra energy we are creating in renewables is being gobbled up by the data centres. The Government's own officials last November, in a memo issued by the Department of public expenditure, pointed out that the upward pressure on energy bills is due mainly to data centre expansion. That followed a warning from the Secretary General of the Minister's own Department in May that data centre growth could threaten our ability to solve the housing crisis. We have repeatedly highlighted the unfairness in the funding model for our grid, but the draft or interim decision for PR6 in July seems to ingrain this. Under the CRU's draft decision, households and SMEs will see their electricity network charges increase but the data centre users will see reductions of up to 18%.

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