Data Centres
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11
============================================================

Pa Daly (SF), Kerry

I thank the Minister for the reply but one of the consequences is in relation to our energy security. This is not a theoretical difficulty any more. When the system is pushed to its limits the risk is not that abstract. What we have, and we have seen this already, are blackouts, supply disruption and emergency measures. This is what happens when a grid is under strain. EirGrid has been warning about it for years. The Secretary General warned of the dangers of the approach and said that we need to choose between housing and AI. Officials in the Department of public expenditure warned that data centres are pushing up household bills. Despite these warnings, not enough is being done to ensure security of supply so that no matter what the circumstances homes will be heated, hospitals will operate, businesses can function and energy bills are not driven sky-high, as they have been over the last number of years. We have seen that instead of securing supply first and managing demand, the Government is allowing demand, particularly from these centres, to dictate the system, and this is the imbalance that is happening.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-11