Electricity Regulation (Climate Action and Connection to Distribution and Transmission Systems) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24 ============================================================ Réada Cronin (SF), Kildare North Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta Ahern as ucht an Bhille seo a thabhairt os comhair na Dála. I congratulate him on bring forward his first Bill. I am sorry that the Government is not supporting it, but Sinn Féin certainly will be doing so. The issue of the explosion in the number of these monstrous data centres for AI is once again before the House. Last week, I and na Teachtaí Pa Daly and Deputy Conway-Walsh tabled a Bill which would ensure that any new connections to the grid would be for public benefit as opposed to solely for private profit. We have repeatedly seen cases of data centres being given priority access to the grid ahead of much-needed housing developments. They are hoovering up energy while simultaneously driving up the price of household energy bills. Ireland is a complete outlier in the context of the number of data centres operating and the amount of energy they consume. The UN has cited Ireland as a cautionary tale because of the amount of our energy we are giving to data centres. On average, these data centres consume about 3% of the energy in the EU whereas in Ireland, they consume almost 24% of our electricity. This is absolutely staggering and completely unsustainable. Last week, my Sinn Féin colleague Lynn Boylan MEP published a report on how ordinary households are footing the bill for network expansion driven by and for data centres. The CRU, which ultimately decides who pays for the expansion of our grid, instead of charging those who are driving the demands, such as large energy users and data centres, is socialising the cost. It is spreading costs across all energy users, even though its mandate was that it was set up to protect the consumer. It is charging ordinary workers and families for the enormous amounts of energy that data centres consume. Instead of charging the data centres, this Government is rolling out the red carpet for them and making the taxpayer fund their industry before sites are even developed. What is all this for anyway? This question is being been asked more and more. Unfortunately, the answer might not necessarily be one we want to hear. In recent days, the world's leading AI companies warned the UN Security Council of the risks posed by AI to humanity. Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, said that if managed poorly, he believes AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole. We have repeatedly heard these warnings from different individuals who either are or were heavily involved in the AI sector. People will have different opinions about this issue. Some will claim that there is catastrophising and scaremongering taking place, while others may believe that we really are ten years from extinction. The whole thing sounds pretty mad and is very sci-fi. Last week I highlighted the fact that people are saying that this could be corporate or regulatory capture or some kind of stock market scam. Whatever your opinion is - and more intelligent people than me seem to be worried about it - it is clear that there is a certain unknown with AI and that Ireland, as a country with ten times more data centres than any other per capita , is driving its growth. The truth is that we do not know what AI will look like in ten years. Ultimately, we cannot legislate for companies in foreign countries that are in the vanguard when it comes to this technology. However, we can protect people against the negative impacts they are having on people’s energy bills and living standards. That is our job as legislators. In my constituency of Kildare North, there Herbata plans to build a data centre. This project has been much opposed by the residents. They have cited issues such as noise pollution, the water that will be required and the increase in their electricity bills. This data centre, for which planning permission has been obtained, subject to an appeal from An Coimisiún Pleanála, is on 70 acres. In other words, an area of land eight times the size of Croke Park. The residents have mentioned the pressure this will put on the local grid and the fact that Herbata will be given priority access to the grid over new housing developments in the future. We saw how that happened in Lucan recently with the substation that was meant to provide energy to houses but which is being used to power a data centre instead. The Herbata site is also going to need six gas generators connected to it because, although it is meant to provide its own energy, it is going to have need a back-up. At a recent meeting of climate committee, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions stated that as we are at full employment, we only have so many workers. Construction workers cannot all be building data centres; we need houses. That is what the people in my constituency want. Parents want their kids to be able to afford to live in the places in north Kildare in which they have grown up and not to be obliged to move two or three hours down the road, because that will mean that they will not see them or their grandchildren as often. According to research published by Maynooth University today, the State could have built 50,000 new homes using the capital invested in data centres from 2019 to 2024. That is crazy. Those in Fianna Fáil had their knickers in a knot last night about sports grants being announced by Fine Gael. It is a pity they do not get upset about the number of people who are homeless or who need homes or the number who are on waiting lists. All they are worried about are sports grants. Anyway, I digress. --- 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/2026-09-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-24