Data Centres
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Jennifer Whitmore (SD), Wicklow

We have seen incredible growth in data centres. In 2015, 5% of our electricity use was by data centres. It is now 23%, is projected to grow to 30% in the coming years and will continue to grow even further than that. I know the Minister's and Government's argument for the red carpet being rolled out for data centres relates to the economic benefits they bring. However, the report the Government came out with in relation to that was essentially a work of fiction. The Minister talks about how many people work in the ICT sector here and says that is why we need so many data centres. That also is fiction because Sweden has the highest proportion of its workforce working in the ICT sector at 9%, yet only 3% to 4% of its electricity use is by data centres. Ireland has 6% of its workforce in ICT, which is significant and I am not understating it, but it does not mean we have to allocate 23% of our electricity use to that sector. Where is the comparability with what is happening in Europe? We are way off the scale with data centres.

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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