Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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32. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the status of the revision of the Government Statement on the Role of Data Centres in Ireland’s Enterprise Policy; the engagement his Department has had with the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications with regard to the revision of the statement; when the revised statement will be finalised and published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52893/21]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Government will shortly publish a new Climate Action Plan that will address our objective to decarbonise our economy and society.

The Plan will be transformative in nature aiming, inter alia, to decarbonise our electricity system requiring innovative and world leading solutions on both the supply and demand sides of that market. We will need to ensure that new electricity demands, and the growth of existing demand, are sustainable and use our infrastructure efficiently. We will simultaneously pursue the electrification of sectors such as transport and heating and, crucially, preserve our security of supply and the reliability of our grid.

My officials have had detailed, ongoing and productive engagement with the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications on our shared ambition to decarbonise our electricity system, and the implications and role for enterprise policy in achieving it. Officials in both Departments meet regularly on this topic and this engagement has been intensified in recent times in light of recent security of supply concerns, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities' (CRU) proposed decision on data centre connection policy and, of course, in drafting the Climate Action Plan 2021.

As part of the range of measures to be included in the Climate Action Plan, I expect that the ‘Government Statement on the Role of Data Centres in Ireland's Enterprise Strategy’ will need to be revised to reflect new electricity targets, policy and regulatory developments. This will be part of a suite of actions to ensure that Ireland is planning appropriately for new energy demand in the context of our electrification and decarbonisation ambitions, facilitating growth in digitalisation and our technology sector, while ensuring that we are cultivating energy markets and infrastructure that deliver smart and competitively priced services to all electricity customers. In revising the 'Government Statement', my Department will continue to work closely with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and stakeholders such as Eirgrid, the CRU and IDA Ireland, to set out the additional measures required to ensure that the existing demand for data centre development can be managed to drive the decarbonisation of our electricity system and deliver regional economic opportunities.

I expect that an appropriate grid connection policy and electricity market design, alongside research, development and innovation in the sector, can facilitate increasingly efficient, flexible and future-proofed infrastructure for Ireland’s digital, knowledge-based economy.