Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome our newest Seandadóir, Nikki Bradley, to the House and congratulate her on her appointment. We wish her well. This is a very collegial House and we all work in harmony together, so I am sure she will fit in and get the run of it quite quickly.

Today, I would like to raise the issue of the moratorium on data centres. This is a very Irish solution to an Irish problem. We have been so proud of, and our economy has excelled owing to, our IT and pharmaceutical sectors. The whole world looks to us because of all the large companies that have European bases here, from Meta and Intel to Apple. I am referring to all the big connections we have. We cannot refer to these and then say we just do not want to store the data because we cannot produce enough power. There is merit to this sentiment but we have to fix the problem. We have to think of better ways. I read an article last week on how data centre power can be generated. This comes back to our planning Bill. There is a hell of a lot in that Bill on offshore energy and other means of generation that we have to proceed with. It is quite apt that the Bill is being discussed today. I am speaking on the back of this. Could the Leader liaise with our Cathaoirleach on this matter? It is an ideal time for us to have a debate on data centres. Since there is to be a moratorium on data centres until at least 2028, I would appreciate it if we could have a debate in the House on them.