Data Centres
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

It might be a bit tedious answering the same question three times but there is a reason that the first question asked by each of three Opposition climate spokespeople has been on data centres. It is because of the level of concern that exists in the Opposition. We see around the world that people are waking up to the impact that data centres are having in their communities, from energy use to water use. The Minister spoke about industrial strategy. We hear time and again that we have no heavy industry here and, therefore, we can have a big data centre industry but the Minister for agriculture uses the exact same argument. He used it on the radio the other day when trying to justify no changes to the status quo in the agriculture industry. We cannot have it both ways. Even in Germany, where there is heavy industry and a lot of jobs attached to it, it accounts for about 25% of the country's energy use. We are going to exceed 25% over the next few years given the trajectory. This is why we are concerned and we just want to make sure the Minister is staying on top of it.

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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