Data Centres
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

Ireland's industrial electricity demand is primarily concentrated in our digital economy. This is our core energy-intensive industry. Data centres are fundamental to Ireland's position as a leading global hub for digital and technology-driven enterprise. They form a critical part of the State's digital infrastructure, supporting activities including cloud computing, artificial intelligence, financial services and public sector digital services. Their economic footprint is substantial with €104 billion in gross value added - that is about 20% of Ireland's economy - enabled by data centre-dependent sectors. Approximately 183,000 people are working in Ireland's technology sector with around 19,000 jobs directly in the data centre industry.
While Ireland has attracted some of the best data centre and tech companies in the world, the integration of large-scale demand on our grid must be facilitated in a sustainable way. The Government's large energy user action plan, LEAP, will progress a plan-led approach for future energy-intensive industry which will unlock investment and innovation in Ireland's renewable energy sector, maximise wider benefits in jobs and skills across Ireland's regions and ensure that the cost of developing additional infrastructure is borne in a manner that is fair. This is being reinforced by unprecedented grid investment of up to €18.9 billion, and that is beneficial to our whole economy and to our society.
Alongside LEAP, the CRU large energy user connection policy establishes a sustainable connection pathway for new data centres that manages demand by requiring generation and system support, addressing security of electricity supply and network constraint considerations, and promoting Ireland's renewable energy ambitions by bringing 80% of new energy demand for any new data centre connection through renewable sources.

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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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17