Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

Why? It is because we cannot meet any of our targets. We are going to reach a point well under half of our targets, which are supposed to be legally binding, because the data centres have gobbled up all of the renewable energy. Sometimes when the Minister talks about this he gives the impression that, as long as we keep adding renewable energy, it is good for the climate. The climate does not care. The planet cares about the amount of greenhouse gases. If you are adding extra renewables but all of that additional capacity is being gobbled up by data centres, then it does not matter. That is precisely what has happened. Since 2017, all of the extra renewable capacity has been gobbled up by data centres. We are therefore also paying for it in terms of climate.
We are also paying for it in terms of housing. It was the Minister's own senior civil servant who said that we need to make a choice about our energy use and asked whether our energy was going to go to data centres or to housing. Of course, the Minister dismissed that. Why? It was because he had made his choice. It is going to go to data centres. This has actually happened. It happened in west Dublin. A new substation was designed to provide electricity for new housing but a data centre then came in and took up that electricity. We are paying for it in terms of public transport. I am convinced that this is a key factor in the delay in the electrification of our buses and other public transport projects.
Data centres are coming first and for what? In a comment last week, which the Minister kind of pointed towards today, he suggested that this is our equivalent to Germany's car factories. That is a joke. In terms of direct jobs, German car factories account for about 400,000 direct jobs. Earlier on, the Minister said - I believe he misspoke and probably wants to correct the record - that there are 19,000 directly employed in data centres. I do not know if he would stand over that figure.

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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