I congratulate the Minister of State on her appointment, and that is probably where the good news ends. I am very disappointed with the Government's amendment. In fact, I found parts of it quite laughable. "Sustainable data centre development" almost sounds like someone coming along 30 or 40 years ago and saying that we need to move sustainable smoking, and that if a person smokes a packet of Marlboro Lights, it is not as bad. It is not just about electricity, water and carbon emissions. We have seen that data centres place considerable strain on local infrastructure. We are literally halfway through the year. Notwithstanding the fact that the climate Minister is not here, where is the climate action plan? We need to introduce a levy upon data centres to help offset the costs and to drive down the extraordinarily high bills that the people we all represent are struggling with. The concern that I have is that we are in the middle of an industrial revolution when it comes to artificial intelligence, and this Government is fumbling around in the dark. There was a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, a couple of months ago that found that one in 14 jobs could be affected by AI. We could be looking at widespread labour displacement, yet I am hearing nothing from the Government that inspires me with confidence that it knows how to navigate its way through this. Any data centre growth must be aligned with offshore renewables. In the time I have left, I want to talk about housing because climate can and must be a critical consideration of the Government's response to the housing crisis. The Government set a target that 500,000 homes would be retrofitted to a BER of B2 by 2030, and that 400,000 heat pumps would be installed. According to the SEAI, we had only 80,000 retrofits between 2018 and 2025 and only 18,765 heat pump installations. These numbers are way off target. I do not understand what the Government is doing in respect of this new electric car grant because the biggest issue that my constituents raise with me about the transition to electric vehicles is the lack of an adequate charging infrastructure. Electric cars are actually getting cheaper and outselling diesel and petrol cars at the moment, which means that the market is working. Instead of gimmicky grants, we need to see investment in the charging infrastructure.

Sentiment score: 0.12