Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
============================================================

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (SF), Wicklow-Wexford

I am supporting this motion calling for the introduction of a €500 energy credit for households funded through a fair levy on data centres. As the Minister of State will know, ordinary workers and families continue to struggle with soaring bills while data centres consume almost a quarter of Ireland's electricity. They are driving up household energy bills while paying much lower relative rates than householders.
This is shocking and something over which every Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TD, many of whom are fanatical about data centres and AI, should be shouting their heads off. It is really shocking. According to Eurostat figures published earlier this year, data centres in Ireland pay an average of 19.1 cent per KW for electricity compared to 36.8 cent per KW paid by households.
The company Echelon Data Centres Ireland, which is building two huge data centres in my own backyard, just outside Arklow, had a massive €2.5 billion valuation last year. All these data centres should be paying at least the same price as the rest of us for electricity, and then let us redirect that money to the people who need it, whether that is hard-pressed households in Arklow or elsewhere in Ireland suffering from the cost-of-living crisis. We need to see an end to the discounted energy rates for data centres and a moratorium on the building of any more of these new facilities to protect the national grid and to meet our climate targets.
The Government may claim there is not a cost-of-living crisis anymore but families know differently. Every week, people are paying more for groceries, more for fuel, more for rent and more for energy. Household budgets are stretched to breaking point. Many people are working harder than ever, yet they are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. We in Sinn Féin have consistently pointed out that the cost-of-living crisis has not gone away and that households still need support with rising energy bills which are among the highest in Europe, as Teachta Doherty mentioned. Many people are now questioning why large energy users are not making a greater contribution through a data centre levy fund towards supporting the grid and helping households with rising costs. The revenue generated could then be ringfenced to provide a €500 energy credit for struggling households.
The message is very simple: ordinary people deserve a fair deal. Those who consume the most energy, that is, big multinational data centres, should make a fair contribution and that contribution should be used to help struggling Irish households with the cost-of-living crisis.

---

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