George Lawlor: Data centres devouring Ireland's power

Minister, listening to your comments about the Arrayers issue and you turn it into a maths equation, I have to say I can't believe how disconnected you are from the reality of what's on the ground. And if you need another reminding, we had fuel protests some time ago where the entire nation was convulsed. Even former Minister Michael Healey Array was so convulsed by it he stood up and said he had no confidence in the leadership of the government and went out and held his fist up in support of the protests. This morning of course he's back in love with the government as he tries to get himself back into some sort of ministerial way. I'm very glad to support the Labour Party motion, my party's motion, because it speaks the truth that can no longer be ignored. We have a situation in this country where of course data centres have a crucial role to play in much of the economic development of this country, of course they do, but there's no use having data centres if in a few years' time people will go home from working in companies that have benefited from data centres and there's no electricity to turn the lights on, which has happened in other parts of the world. We should learn the experience of other areas. The evidence is stark also in terms of climate. Last month temperatures in Ireland in May exceeded 30 degrees Celsius and if that's not an indication of climate change I don't know what weather they have in Kerry but Deputy Danny Healy-Ray seems to have no confidence whatsoever that climate change is taking place. We'll tell that to places like Enniscorthy and other parts of the country that are decimated year in year out almost as a result of climate change. A recent United Nations report described Ireland as a cautionary tale for the environmental impact of data centres. That should alarm every single member of this house. We now have over 22% of our electricity consumed by data centres and this is projected to rise to 30% by 2030 and potentially an unbelievable 55% if growth continues unchecked. And that would mean that data centres would be using more electricity than every home, every farm, every small business, every hospital and every school in the country combined. We also have the issue, and you spoke about retrofitting, retrofitting would be a most welcome addition to every home in the country. But when you go to people and ask them to come up with 30 or 40 or 50,000 or 40,000 in matching funding, you might as well be asking those people for a million euro. They just don't have it. It's too expensive for ordinary decent working people to invest in. They don't have it. So one of the things I've proposed in the past is a fair deal type scheme for retrofitting where the government invests to ensure that the people have access to a retrofitting scheme. There's no use having a great scheme if people can't access and it is a great scheme but you have to have tens of thousands to latch on to it also. The government's own policies are making the situation worse. The CRU's large energy user connection policy, the private wires legislation and the proposed LNG terminal all point in the same direction. More fossil fuels and the Climate Change Advisory Council has already warned that all new renewable energy is being swallowed up by new data centre demand. And where there is vast solar farms, there's one in Gusseran in Wexford where people have no problem really with a solar farm but they do have a problem in a very rural area where 100 BES batteries are being installed, the size of a container each. We have to look at it again, Minister.