Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in today at this busy time. He has addressed many of the issues around the causes of the particular situation in which we found ourselves recently, so I will not address those issues. I would like to return to a couple of the issues raised and give my perspective, particularly in regard to data centres. It is very important to get the facts right. Data centres are not a bad thing but it is the energy and the source of the energy used in the data centres which is problematic. Unlike a piece of plastic that is created from fossil fuels, a data centre is as good as the energy that goes into it. The climate action committee heard that no service agreement has been signed with a data centre for a year with EirGrid. That should give people some confidence. There is a narrative that data centres are going in almost every week. Undoubtedly, there are many data centres that were already there. If we get it right, it can help us. That was very clear when EirGrid came before the committee because on the west coast of Ireland in particular, we need to find more industry in order to be able to use the energy, so that the homes around that can also use that energy. If we get it right, it could be a good thing, but we have to get it right and we cannot keep building them unless we get that piece right.I am given some confidence by EirGrid saying that it will come back to us with a plan over the next few weeks and I look forward to seeing that plan. I do not agree that it should involve telling the centres to produce their own energy in whatever way they wish. There should be more terms and conditions regarding it. We questioned EirGrid on that and the company took on board the concerns we expressed.

I regularly hear concerns expressed about the SEAI, some of which are valid. There is a backlog of people waiting to get their homes retrofitted. A lot of public representatives are getting calls about this, particularly in the west of Ireland, which does show that there is an appetite among people to invest because they know there will be a long-term return from doing so in terms of lowering their bills and having a more comfortable home. Again, we have been in government for a relatively short period but there has been huge investment in this area. The Minister, Deputy Harris, attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science today and the discussion was dominated by climate change. Every single Department knows that something needs to be done and understands that this is a crisis. We are all stepping up to the mark. I am given confidence by the Minister's opening remarks this evening. I wanted to put on record some of the things that have happened at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. The version of events at that committee has been slightly distorted and I wanted to set the record straight.