Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)

I do not oppose any investment in the ESB infrastructure - it is very welcome - but what I am concerned about, and what I do oppose, is where this investment will go and what the money is to be spent on. I will speak in support of the amendments tabled by both Senators Collins and Higgins. All their amendments are really well thought out. They make a lot of sense and they have put a lot of work into them. I really hope the Minister of State listens to these amendments because there is a very palpable feeling in the House and the country that data centres are taking more than their fair share of the energy available and are putting the stability of the grid at risk while offering very little in terms of direct employment or other benefits. There is a broad range of opinions in this and, in fairness, they should all be listened to. However, we know that data centres currently consume almost one quarter of Ireland’s electricity and that is predicted to rise towards one third in coming years. No matter how we look at it, that is not sustainable. If we do not start putting more rigorous controls in place around the construction and fuelling of often billionaire-owned data centres, we as a country are sending a very clear signal to the world and to extractive industries that we have basically abandoned our climate targets and we are open to any kind of business.

The effective moratorium on new data centres in the Dublin region, which has been in place since 2021, needs to be extended nationwide. I understand the presence of so many tech firms in Dublin means there is a logic to the housing of data centres in Ireland and that our cool climate seems to offer the perfect environment for data centres but their very presence is putting that very climate and environment at risk.

Data centres are dependent upon huge amounts of electricity - we know this. As Senator Higgins said, they are already using all the additional green energy we have generated over recent years, meaning that we have made no progress at all in our climate goals on energy use. By pure chance, the DataCentres Ireland conference starts tomorrow here in Dublin. A quick glance at the programme shows that the industry is fully aware of the challenges that face it and the impact its demand will place upon the grid. The sector is concerned about the grid capacity and the number of panel discussions and presentations due to take place tomorrow about the grid and its inability to supply the needs of the sector is noteworthy. Over the last 12 months, we have seen how fragile our electricity supply is. Living in the north west, I know this more than many. To keep adding more and more to the load will not only make matters worse. Providing power separate from the grid - perhaps a dedicated off-grid generation unit for each data centre - may be a solution and is certainly a solution that many data centres seem to be pursuing but that puts into sharp relief the link Senator Higgins’s amendments Nos 3 to 6 have drawn between data centres and the fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel infrastructure. We cannot allow the insatiable appetites of data centres to lead us down a path towards LNG. We know LNG is a gas that is rich in methane, which is 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide.We cannot be moving towards any other fossil fuel infrastructure that will do nothing for ordinary consumers and put us even further away from meeting our climate commitments. I find it baffling. Let us be clear that we do not need any more data centres. As both Senators here have said we need more hospitals, Garda stations, water safety, wastewater treatment plants and homes and we definitely need to meet our legally binding climate targets, which we will not be on course to do if we keep heading down towards this road. Until the data centre sector identifies and provides adequate supplies of renewable energy electricity to power itself, we should not be encouraging further development of data centres. We should not be funding them or the polluting fossil fuel infrastructure it requires, so I am happy to support the amendments raised by Senators Collins and Higgins.