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

Absolutely, and we are all focused on bringing through more renewable energy. Offshore wind is vital. Our issue on this side of the House is that the renewable energy we are creating at the moment is being gobbled up by data centres. We also know the impact this is having on energy bills. We also know how much water they use. I know it is a relatively small percentage but there is an unfairness at the heart of how they are treated, whereby ordinary people were asked to abide by a hosepipe ban this summer whereas data centres actually doubled their water consumption during that time. It is in situations like this that people feel the unfairness. They see they are not getting a fair shake. That is why we are bringing up the issue. We completely acknowledge the importance of underpinning jobs in the ICT sector but, on the other hand, we have to be concerned about some of the types of jobs these hyper-scale AI data centres are going to create and whether it is a good thing. We need to keep this under review. We spend half our time here talking about how we will regulate and rein in these big ICT companies while, on the other hand, we are doing everything we can to facilitate their continued growth. We have to watch this.

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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