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

Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

I did make reference to the Bill that Sinn Féin published yesterday. As with any Bill, from wherever in the House it comes, be that Opposition or Government, I will look at it and do so in a positive way.
The network charges are set by CRU. From 2020 to 2026, the data centre sector saw an average increase of 175% in network costs. I do not set the network charges; that is just the reality. There is, though, an overall issue of affordability, which I know we will get to during the course of the morning, whereby we see elevated prices right the way across the developed world, including here in Ireland. That is where the work of the national energy affordability task force, which will conclude soon and report to me, is very important. We have to do our best to soften the blow of increases, particularly for households and small businesses, but how we get to a sustainable way of doing so is by accelerating renewable delivery and delivering the infrastructure projects we need, like the North-South interconnector.

---

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