Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I start by saying this to everybody who is impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, the cost of energy, childcare, the failure of wages to keep pace with the cost of living, inflation, the cost of groceries and by the inequity we see highlighted in this motion and to those who are suffering as a result of the cost-of-living crisis as opposed to those who are profiteering out of it, they should get out on the streets this weekend and demand a change in this Government's priorities in advance of the budget. Those who are doing that will be assembling at the Garden of Remembrance at 1 o'clock in the Affordable Ireland demonstration. The reason they should do it is because the Government, despite the fact that it has a three and a half page amendment in response to our motion explaining why it is not going to accept our motion, fails to answer or address in any serious way, or at all, the central point of the motion. Why is it that data centres owned by some of richest people in the world, making extraordinary profits, are paying half the rate per unit of electricity as is being paid by ordinary working people and householders who are being hammered with the cost of living? How could that be, and why is the Government going to maintain that status quo ? That in effect means those who are struggling to pay their energy bills are subsidising the data centres whose owners are making obscene profits while those data centres are directly contributing to the inability of households to pay their bills.
We now have a credible estimate that 8.5% of your electricity bill is as a result of data centres hoovering up the electricity and making you pay more while they pay half the rate. One could not make it up, but of course it speaks to something wider in this country. There is no cost-of-living crisis for the big corporations, the multinationals and speculators and the super-rich. They are profiting from the cost-of-living misery that ordinary people are suffering and the Government is maintaining this status quo . Even if it has dire consequences for the environment and the economic well-being of ordinary people, it is determined to maintain that unjust status quo.
If the plight of people struggling with the cost of living does not move this Government, it should maybe consider what newspapers like the Financial Times are saying because all of this is infrastructure for AI. The Financial Times is now saying that the entire American economy is one big gamble on AI, and we are now being told by the AI tech bros that it could destroy humanity. By the way, that is scaremongering at one level, but anybody seriously looking at it knows it is because the AI bubble may be about to burst and they are looking for a bailout. Yet again, they are looking for a bailout so that ordinary people will pay the bill. Our economy, more than any other, is a big gamble on AI and the tech bros. That is a very dangerous thing for the future of our economy and ordinary people are again picking up the bill. It is obvious the Government is not listening and is committed to putting the tech bros and billionaires before the needs of ordinary people and that is why we need to get out on the streets this weekend, and why the workers balloting for strike action are absolutely right to do so.

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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