As my colleague Deputy Smith said, the Government's countermotion is embarrassing and shameful. Really, it is a Comical Ali-type approach to politics. It does good government, and the idea of good government, a disservice. Frankly, we need to put the breaks on the development of data centres, at least until our grid capacity increases and household bills come down. If this Government put more energy, pun intended, into developing our offshore wind capacity rather than developing more data centres, we might build the kind of resilience we need in our grid for industry and domestic customers to avail of plentiful and cheap energy, but as usual the Government is putting the cart before the horse and is left wondering why the cart is not pulling. The Government has made, and will make today, all kinds of thin arguments to say we are wrong. It will argue that data centres create jobs. The reality is they take up massive acreage and resources and create only a comparatively small handful of long-term jobs. As the motion lays out, over 22% of our electricity is already being used up by data centres and by 2030 that will be over 30%. At the current rate of growth, it will not be long before over half of our electricity is eaten up by this one source. As colleagues have said, Ireland has the highest electricity prices in the EU. The fact we are also the European leader in data centre permissions is no accident, and this Government needs to join the dots. There is a direct link between the proliferation of data centres in the country and ever-rising energy bills. Research by Friends of the Earth shows that Irish households paid an estimated €715 million more in electricity bills from 2015 to 2023 directly due to data centres. That is an equivalent of some €360 per household. In effect, in Ireland, under this Government, each bill payer is charged a data centre tax. The same research shows that Irish households face a further €1.43 billion in rising bills up to 2034 because of the projected growth in data centres. That will mean an extra €644 per household on household bills. These are the same bills for which the Government used taxpayers' money to help pay for energy credits in recent years. Think about that – these are effectively more taxpayer subsidies for data centres. These increases I referred to will disproportionately impact on lower income households. That is why in this motion we are also calling for targeted energy credits and SEAI supports for households in budget 2027. The motion also makes clear Labour’s opposition to the decision made in the Critical Infrastructure Bill to disapply section 15 of the climate Act. This is constitutionally dubious and is wide open to challenge. That Bill is concluding in the Seanad this week and it is not too late for the Government to change course.

Sentiment score: 0.08