Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Data centres are obviously critical to our economy, they bring in huge amounts of money and giant amounts of employment. Ireland is storing about one thrid of European data, it is clearly an engine of our economy. We had a policy on data centres in 2018 that came from the Department of trade and did not refer to security of supply, the risk of blackouts in our electricity system or climate change. We updated that in 2022 with the new Government statement. The Commission for the Regulation of Utilities is now carrying out a review. That commission is independent and reports to the Oireachtas environment committee. If I am being asked when exactly it is going to publish its review, I am being told it will be in the summer but the environment committee is the right forum to ask, as the commission is not actually answerable to the Minister or the Department.

Data centres have to find a way to contribute to the security of supply. That is possible. If they all have a backup power supply and we run out of electricity in the country, we can turn off the data centre supplies first and allow them to run on backup. They can contribute to security of supply. If we make data centres provide additional renewable energy every time they are built, which was not going to otherwise be provided - a new wind or a new solar farm - they will be contributing to our climate targets as well. We need to find a way that we can make the data centres work for the economy, but also work for our climate targets and our security of electricity supply. We can do that. I talk to these tech companies all the time and of course they have influence on the Government because they contribute so much in tax.