I am glad to be able to speak on the motion today. I know the Minister is walking a tightrope and it is very difficult to get the proper balance. We have been waiting for the wind energy guidelines for 21 years. Fine Gael promised two elections ago that we would have them in 12 months. Councils are at a loss. It is the same with the solar situation. The best of land in the country is being taken over by solar. With regard to data centres, the United Nations, which I do not often pay a lot of attention to, is even issuing a cautionary tale about us in Ireland for allowing data centre growth to run far ahead of our energy and water capacity. When the UN is warning us, something must be amiss. We need to cut our cloth according to our measure. I am not opposed per se to data centres or any other development. However, I am against what is going on with the huge amount of electricity they use and the great need they have for water to cool their systems and everything else. The proposed Shannon pipeline is like a runaway train. It will be a second children's hospital. It is to bring water to Dublin when there are plenty of aquifers and water in the vicinity of Dublin without having this mad project. I call it madness. It will do huge ecological damage to the mid-west. Uisce Éireann has gone off without planning and without any licence from the EPA or anybody else and has spent a fortune compensating farmers and paying them 25% upfront. Does Uisce Éireann have some inner contact line whereby it gets the nod to go ahead and do this and to hell with planning, An Coimisiún Pleanála and anything else and it can do this and start spending money? It is out of control completely. As I said with regard to data centres, people are trying to heat their homes, the cost of living is going up and data centres are having an inordinate impact. Most of them are in the capital city, which is bursting at the seams. We need more balanced regional development. Several speakers referred during the motion to the home support scheme for ordinary families to try to make savings on their energy and do something for the climate and have retrofits in a timely fashion so they can avail of them. No families have €45,000 in their back pockets that they can dish out to pay for these retrofits, so there is a lot to do. I know it is a hard balancing act, and the Minister is doing his best, but we have to get a better balance and listen when people like the United Nations tell us that capacity here is all wrong and we have too many eggs in one basket. We must try to redress that and have more balanced regional development as well.

Sentiment score: 0.07