Electricity Regulation (Climate Action and Connection to Distribution and Transmission Systems) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

I thank all the Deputies who spoke here this afternoon and I appreciate the support from Deputies Cronin, Paul Murphy and Heneghan. I thank the Minister of State for being here. Obviously, it would have been preferable if the Minister could have been here but I appreciate the Minister of State is the designated survivor today, so I thank him for his time. I am disappointed to hear he will not be supporting my Bill. Part of the Government might but I guess not all of it and that is what is important. To the extent that it is worth pointing out, I would be open to amendments on this. In response to Deputy Heneghan, section 1(c) of my Bill does have a de minimis capacity level for this to take effect. Obviously, I would be open to looking at that and refining it to ensure that it would not have any adverse effects like Deputy Cronin mentioned. It could happen to apply to a housing estate. That is obviously not the intention of the Bill and that is something that could quite easily be solved on Committee Stage but that does not appear to be to be on the cards, unfortunately.
Regarding the opportunity costs associated with the continued proliferation of data centres, Deputies Cronin and Paul Murphy mentioned a very interesting and important study released today by researchers from Maynooth University, UCD and the University of Barcelona that looks at the broader economics around data centres. It was said previously that 50,000 houses could have been built with the resources that have been directed towards data centres over the past number of years. I am afraid to say that the report finds the Government's claim about the economic benefits of data centres to be exaggerated. It is an extensive study so I do not have time to touch on all of it. However, the basic point is that Ireland's data centre sector might appear to be enormous when measured through the multinational heavy gross value-added metric as it was in the Department's report or when dependent economic activity is attributed to data centres as was done in that report but the genuine additional domestically retained economic activity in the data centre sector is smaller than the Government will admit.
We know that in the ICT sector, the gross value added to the economy is massively distorted by multinational activity. The KPMG report that the Department commissioned to make the case for data centres uses national accounting data. That can include GDP and other similar measures but the gross value-added in the Irish ICT sector is hugely affected by multinational profit shifting, which means profits accrued due to economic activity elsewhere in the world are simply transferred here or booked here by the Irish arm of these multinational tech firms so the profits can be taxed at our relatively low corporation tax rate. Treating that as evidence of corresponding economic activity inflates the apparent contribution of data centres - at least the ones that are located here. We know that the value in the ICT sector that actually stays in Ireland is relatively small, so much of the activity associated with that industry reflects accounting or tax structures rather than equivalent productivity in Ireland. That is really the point I am trying to make. The study says the data centres are essentially passed through investments or enclave industries and the local economic activity surrounding them is limited relative to the value attributed to the sector in these national accounts.
Then, of course, there is the jobs argument around this. In terms of direct employment on the operational side of things, there are around 3,000 jobs across the entire data centre sector and a further 20,000 jobs or so in direct or indirect construction. These are jobs that are temporary in nature. The point is that Ireland has scarce construction workers and skills.
An open question to the Minister of State and the Government is whether using this resource to construct more and more data centres is really the best use of that resource. If they are building hyperscale data centres, they cannot simultaneously build houses, transport infrastructure or other important projects in the public interest. We have been scouring Europe for the past year, looking for the 8,000 construction workers we need to build MetroLink, workers who we want to stay here so they can continue the line out to our area in Dublin South-West, as the Minister of State well knows - #metrosouthwest .

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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