Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

I support this motion in principle. I have a couple of queries about what is implementable and what is not, but the hard-pressed people of Ireland, faced with rising costs, need a little bit more help in terms of energy prices at the moment while also trying to move toward a more sustainable future. For many years, people in Ireland have been told that our electricity bills, which I think are now the third highest in the European Union, are simply the result of international factors beyond our control. In some ways, that is true. Looking at gas, which I am about to get on to, global gas prices have risen internationally and conflict has contributed to that. The reason we are dependent on gas is because the electricity market operates on the system of marginal pricing, which means that the most expensive form of power needed to meet demand at any given time sets the price for 100% of the market. Right now, we are dependent on fossil gas for that. In the future, it could be different. If I have time, I will outline a couple of suggestions, which may already be in the Government mindset, but it is the pace I am worried about.
Why are we burning so much gas when we have all this existing wind potential? I have mentioned wave and tidal before. The answer right now lies in the uninhibited growth of data centres, which are consuming nearly a quarter of our metered electricity in this State, which matches the usage of every single residential home in Ireland. These data centres are operating 365 days a year, basically. The demand is completely inflexible, so when the wind stops blowing, that baseload does not end up dropping. Instead, we are forced to fire up the gas generators - diesel has, which is also a fossil fuel and has cost implications, has been referenced as well - to keep the data centre servers cool. Under the market rules, the gas does not just price electricity for the tech giants. Rather, it prices electricity for the family trying to heat their home in Clondalkin, Saggart, Rathcoole, Lucan, Adamstown, Brittas, Palmerstown or elsewhere throughout the country. Data centre demand has inflated wholesale electricity prices by up to 8.5%, maybe more, which has put hundreds of euro in extra costs on the average household in recent years as part of a rise in energy and household prices.
We cannot look at data centre policy on its own and energy policy separately. They are together. The current trajectory is placing an unfair tax, for want of a better term, on Irish families to subsidise what is still an unsustainable demand on our grid. If the data centres were not there in the first place, a lot more of our supply would be provided by renewables and we would not have the same dependence on gas. We need to review the data centre grid connections. There is already another application in my constituency for a licence to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. The message has not gone out to these companies yet, and I do not think it is Government policy to say that it is an unwelcome place for data centres. I have mentioned before the brave new future where we could be producing so much excess capacity that we could afford to operate data centres and be the data centre hub of Europe as one of the major energy producers. There is huge revenue potential, irrespective of the fairly minuscule job creation element associated with them.
As of now, we are going to have to work within Europe to reform the marginal pricing system that is penalising consumers for the corporate energy demands of multinationals. It is penalising the producers of renewable energy, basically. The figures are staggering. When a single sector consumes nearly a quarter of our national electricity and ordinary families face a crushing cost-of-living crisis, it beggars belief. I am kind of lost for words in terms of how to put it, but if you ask an ordinary constituent whether they feel they have been fleeced by data centres, they would say, "Absolutely". They feel they are not getting the support. The Government supports for electricity pricing over the last couple of years were very welcome. The current fuel allowances are very welcome. One half of me says that I do not like subsidising fossil fuels to keep cars and buses going. Another part of me acknowledges that some of the electricity produced is from fossil fuel as well. We need to reduce our dependence on these supplies and reduce our carbon emissions. When you look at what is actually impacting on people in their bottom pocket, you have to take a two-pronged approach. Even if we need to borrow strategically to create that energy self-sufficiency, it will benefit us in the medium term.
I have a couple of queries about the specific mechanisms in this motion in terms of legal hurdles, which give the Government an excuse to do nothing. From the research I have done, a legislative ban would violate Article 49 of the EU treaty on the freedom of establishment. That would leave the State vulnerable to court action and multibillion euro damages claims. This electricity levy to raise the €500 would also violate EU Regulation 2019/943 on non-discriminatory grid access. In terms of ring-fencing money directly for a household credit, that would clash with Article 11 in our own Constitution in terms of where taxes are collected and how they are distributed. However, that does not mean that the sentiment of this motion is not 100% right. We have to find a work-around so that we do not have legalese blocking Government action.
To achieve the goals through legally enforceable pathways, there might be a couple of other approaches, such as legally codifying the strictest possible version of the CRU's large energy users policy and mandating that no data centre can connect to the grid unless it has its own off-grid supply of battery storage and is relying 100% on renewables. Personally, I do not think any new data centre should be built for the next ten years until we get to a point where we are more comfortable in our energy generation. We could still levy some corporation tax off these companies, as it stands, to make sure that Irish families get some sort of a subsidy.
We are at a critical juncture in terms of our energy self-sufficiency and our potential. What would get rid of our dependence on gas as the baseline? If we put the investment in, mass battery storage would be one element to store all the daytime wind, solar, tidal and wave, which we are not even properly investing in, and replace the gas plants during evening peaks. The creation of new interconnectors would create further links to France and the UK.
If we have to import cheap nuclear or solar power from Spain when the domestic wind is low, so be it. Until we get to the point where we are producing three or four times our actual needs, it will be a quid pro quo and we will benefit from that. That means we have to overbuild our own capacity for wind as well as for tidal and wave so that the grid is always renewable no matter what. Even on low-wind days when we are taking the solar from Spain, the pricing will be fixed in such a way that it is not dependent on fossils to set it. We could look at fixed-price contracts to have steady lower rates of renewable developers for decades. That could be done at EU level, bypassing the market price on a day-to-day basis for fossil fuels.
While it would be more expensive to implement now, green hydrogen is also a solution. Once you get to the point where you have built your hydrogen infrastructure and it is produced from excess renewables then the hydrogen can also replace gas to make sure we do not have any kind of winter blackouts. I am foreseeing that will be a possible solution for the 2030s and as we move into the 2040s, if we put the investment in. As Deputy Heneghan has so eloquently said so often, we have to get the grid right and allow the private generators and home generators to access and share the energy and have a more sustainable individual, local grid as well as having one big national one that is upscaled for renewable generation off the west coast which is not the case now. If we put in all that work, which will cost tens of billions, that will reap rewards. We will be the energy Arabs of Europe in the 2040s at a time when other countries will need access to that energy, not only for heating and transport but also for cooling depending on how the climate change situation goes. It will all be renewable and will have lowered our carbon emissions to virtually nothing. We have the potential if we have the vision.

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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