Data Centres
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
============================================================

Pa Daly (SF), Kerry

I thank the Minister for the reply. I note what he says about the economic footprint and the necessity for a plan-led approach. I will come back to that in some of my later questions. However, we have had and continue to have a first-come, first-served, laissez-faire attitude, and some larger energy users have been facilitated in hoarding connections that they have. Some housing developments, like the one in the midlands, that have tried to get connections have been put behind data centres. A significant proportion of the connection queue consists of speculative applications, and communities and other connections have been left behind. The European Commission last December said we need strategic prioritisation of scarce grid capacity. Will the Minister move away from the first-come, first-served attitude?

---

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