Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. While I wish to indicate some degree of disquiet on my part, I am not going to go into point scoring mode. This annual transition statement was apparently published at lunchtime and we are supposed to respond to it now and oral statements were supposed to be made on it within four or five hours. That is not satisfactory. I do not blame the Minister who has barely warmed his seat in the Department but it is wrong that we are being treated in this way.

I am a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, which marks the Minister's Department. I hope that his tenure will be marked by a new approach in the Department to its relationship with the Oireachtas. I have sat at various meetings of that committee and the constant impression I get is that we are being fed out of date information and obscurantist language. What has been so clear to everyone who has attended the meetings is that Ireland is nowhere near meeting any of its targets, has no real capacity to do so and it will breach all of its targets. This fact has constantly been kept hidden from us until it is too late to conceal it.

I will give one example to the Minister, of which I have some knowledge, namely the data centres which are being established in Ireland. As I understand it, four or five data centres will be established in Ireland with the active encouragement of the Government because it is part of their alliance with the IT sector and the social media sector, in particular. While I can see the commercial justification for it, each of those data centres will increase the demand for electricity in Ireland by between 6% and 8%. If four or five of them are constructed, as is current Government policy, the overall demand for energy in Ireland on that account alone, will increase by between 30% and 35% over the next few years. At the same time, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, is saying to the committee of which I am a member that we must reduce electricity consumption in Ireland by 2030 by approximately one third. These targets do not coincide. The Department was bending over backwards to avoid admitting that the targets in the areas for which it has responsibility will not be met and that other Departments were pursuing radically different policies, which will increase the demand for electricity in Ireland by an order of one third at a time the SEAI is seeking a reduction of 25% to 30%.We cannot have it every way and we have to have a degree of honesty in all of this. I know that this evening's session has been prepared in haste and we have a list of bullet points from a series of Ministers and Ministers of State with no response or input and that was not what the Act was about or what was envisaged. It was envisaged that members of the Government would come into both Houses of the Oireachtas and orally present and defend what they were going to do, but coming in here with little wish lists of bullet points and aspirations is not the way to achieve that. I do not want to sound mean minded or conclude on a mean-minded note but this is approaching farce this afternoon.