I welcome everyone to the Public Gallery, and give a special welcome to the fifth and sixth class students. There are now more than 500,000 households in arrears on their gas and electricity bills. That number has never been higher and it is continuing to soar. Thousands of people all over the country are facing a cold and bleak winter and feel a rising sense of dread every single time a bill comes through their doors. Many of these people have never had problems paying bills before but now, despite scrimping and s…

Will the Government introduce a €400 energy credit for low- and middle-income families and radically ramp up solar?

I thank the Tánaiste and I welcomed hearing the Minister talking about battery storage. It would have been better if the Government had not removed the battery storage grant in 2022 when Ukraine was invaded. That would have assisted. A lot of people have put in solar, but there are many hundreds of thousands of people who cannot afford to do it. It is those people who are really struggling. It is the low-to-middle-income earners who are finding it hard to move away from fossil fuels because they are not getting eno…

They do not work. We need to insulate homes. That entails a long-term strategy and long-term investment.

I want to raise with the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, Kilcoole Primary School in County Wicklow. Kilcoole Primary School covers two schools that have amalgamated, St. Anthony's and St. Brigid's. It was a really good news story. It got approval for a new build and an extension for the new school. The entire community was very excited about it. It is a really positive story. I was there on the day the then Taoiseach turned the sod. He spoke about how important this new facility would be for the childre…

I thank the Minister of State. I have seen some fantastic modular buildings but what they are not is the same as the permanent traditional building. The children who will be in those classrooms will know that they are in a different type of build. Those modular buildings will not look like the traditional build and the existing school and they will not feel like it. Those children will feel different. That should not be acceptable to the Minister of State with responsibility for special education. When the Tánaiste…

As a country, Ireland has never been as wealthy. We have never had so many resources available to us to support people and to make this country even better than it is, yet we still have so many people who feel completely left behind by this Government and the previous Government. They are struggling to keep their heads above water and really cannot see a future for themselves. We saw a report yesterday about the number of young people who are planning on emigrating. We have sort of turned into a country of contradi…

My question is very simple. Will the Minister commission a report into the number of data centres the Irish energy grid and water networks can handle? It is incredible we are in 2026 still asking for a simple report on the capacity of the energy and water systems to handle the huge increase in data centres over the past ten years.

We have seen incredible growth in data centres. In 2015, 5% of our electricity use was by data centres. It is now 23%, is projected to grow to 30% in the coming years and will continue to grow even further than that. I know the Minister's and Government's argument for the red carpet being rolled out for data centres relates to the economic benefits they bring. However, the report the Government came out with in relation to that was essentially a work of fiction. The Minister talks about how many people work in the …

The LEAP would enable, potentially, 50% of our electricity to go to data centres in the coming years. While the Minister said 80% has to come from renewables, there is a six-year path to that happening. In those six years, they can be based on gas. Data centres are pushing up our energy prices, they are making our grid unstable and they will make it impossible to meet our climate targets, which should be a concern to the Minister. That risks us having to pay €28 billion in fines. There is no point in the Minister s…

We have had a series of brown-outs over the past number of years.

The Minister for justice recently brought in reforms for the criminal justice legal aid system. While we all recognise that there is a need for reform within the system, the reforms that the Minister has brought in are ill-considered, not backed up by data or evidence and have led to absolute chaos in the courts system. Solicitors have removed themselves from free legal aid work. The Wicklow courts system has essentially ground to a halt. No Wicklow solicitors are participating or providing free legal aid advice. I…

None of them are getting legal justice.

I have never used that language.

Is the Minister okay that-----

We agree about the need for reform. Do it properly.

It would be based on evidence.

Hear, hear.

A hosepipe ban will come into force in a number of counties on the east coast from tomorrow. I completely understand that because we are seeing record temperatures and are in the middle of dealing with the climate crisis and climate change. It is important that we conserve water, but can the Taoiseach understand the frustration of many people being told that they have to conserve water when it appears that there is very little governance or oversight of the amount of water used by data centres, particularly those i…

Uisce Éireann seems to have plucked its figure from thin air.