Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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137. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the engagement he has had with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in relation to the energy demand of data centres versus homes in Ireland this term; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30070/25]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government 2025 outlines the Government's policy position in relation energy policy, housing policy, FDI growth and the many other goals and objectives of the Government. It reflects the balance between the many opportunities and challenges facing the country and the actions that will be taken over the lifetime of the Government. It recognises that increased and unprecedented investment and delivery in our grid and expanding our energy generation capacity is a priority.

While in the near-term already contracted data centres will be accommodated on the grid, for the medium-term, the Government has committed to developing a plan that will, inter alia, guide the development of plan-led data centre infrastructure in alignment with our decarbonisation objectives and growing Ireland’s knowledge-based economy that will provide certainty for the sector over the medium-term.

Moreover, the electricity system operators, EirGrid & ESB Networks, assess the various expected future demands on the system including from, economic and population growth, housing, electric vehicle and heat pump targets, as part of their network development plans. These network development plans form a vital input into the system operators submissions to the price review process which sets out the level of investment required over the next 5 years to ensure our grid can meet the various drivers of growth.

CRU is currently reviewing the proposals from both ESB Networks and EirGrid in terms of their investment requirements. The submissions made to the CRU propose a significant uplift to the investment required in terms of both distribution and transmission costs to support the requirements of a growing population and economy, the exact level of this will be part of the CRU’s final determination.

The Programme for Government seeks to address the challenges of balancing energy needs by committing to scale up investment in critical infrastructure and our electricity grid which will be advantageous for customers and enhance the data centre and digital economy footprint to support continued FDI investment.

I and officials from my Department regularly engage with other Departments on these cross-cutting policy issues.