Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

I thank People Before Profit for bringing forward this motion which we are supporting. I want to thank Friends of the Earth, which has done incredible work on this in recent months. I highlight the report it has done which shows how much Irish households have been paying for the expansion of data centres. There was €715 million more in electricity bills between 2015 and 2023, and it has identified that Irish households will pay an additional almost €1.5 billion in electricity bills due to data centre growth. While the Government blames war and the Middle East for rising energy costs, on the other hand it is sanctioning the massive increase in data centres which is adding to it.
What we are actually seeing here in Ireland - and we have become a poster child for this across the world - is the grim reality of the AI-driven dystopian future that the big tech trillionaires have for us: data centres expanding across our country at an exponential rate by Meta, Google, Amazon, now consuming more energy than all urban households in the country. What have ordinary people seen as a result? Higher energy costs for families who cannot afford to put food on the table, the guzzling of our water when we had water shortages, eating up our renewable energy and the gobbling up of our infrastructure resulting in delays of much-needed housing delivery in the middle of a housing catastrophe. What does our Government do? The very same thing it did with the vulture funds - roll them in, bow down to them and give them whatever they want and facilitate them with cheaper electricity subsidised by the Irish public. It lifted the moratorium on data centres despite being warned that data centre expansion would make it difficult to meet electricity demand during extreme cold weather.
Will we see families in this country freeze so as to keep data centres running? This is utterly dystopian. Níl sé seo ceart. Teastaíonn rialtas uainn a dhéanann cinntí chun leas na ndaoine seachas leas na gcorparáidí móra. Cabhraigh leis na daoine seachas leis na hionaid sonraí. Electricity bills have increased by 70% in the past five years and they are going to increase more because of data centres. The Social Democrats believe there needs to be a moratorium on data centres. We believe we need to pause and look at the impact they are having and put people, our resources, nature and our communities ahead of what these big tech corporations are pushing. We have to question it and the benefits of AI. We know people are losing their jobs. We have the creation of AI slop so that these data centres expand.

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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