3. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on climate action, environment and energy will next meet. [9489/25]
Sentiment score: 0.09
The Central Bank in its latest quarterly report issued another damning indictment of the catastrophic failure of Government housing policy. One aspect of it that relates to this subcommittee is the fact that deficits in water infrastructure are now a major impediment to delivering the volume of housing necessary to address the housing crisis. I wonder if there is any joined-up thinking going on in terms of the enormous volume of water usage by data centres and the proliferation of such centres. We already know they use up 20% of our electricity, and they are driving up energy costs for ordinary householders, but what about water usage? In Clonee, Meta's data centre, which is only one data centre, uses 2.5 million litres of water per day. This is the same volume of water usage as the entire city of Athlone with 21,000 people. We have 82 data centres in this country with 18 more on the way. Do the maths. If the lack of water is now a major impediment to putting roofs over the heads of people affected by the housing crisis, how on earth are we continuing to allow data centres, which are sucking up vast amounts of the inadequate water resources available to us to make a profit for a tiny number of companies? Is the Taoiseach looking at their water usage and the extent to which it is now an obstacle to us having the water necessary to build the homes we need to address the housing crisis?
Sentiment score: -0.28
Gas is worse than coal.
Sentiment score: -0.48
No, it is not.
Sentiment score: -0.30
18. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach to report on his attendance at the informal EU leaders' retreat on 3 February 2025. [9490/25]
Sentiment score: 0.07
The Taoiseach goes first.
Sentiment score: 0.00
The death toll in Gaza in the past two days is estimated to be 1,000. Hundreds have been slaughtered in their beds by Israel. Will the Taoiseach admit and condemn the fact that the horrific slaughter of 50,000 or so people over the past 15 months could not have been done without the weapons provided by the United States under Biden previously and now Trump, whose ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza has egged on and clearly emboldened the Israeli regime to start to commit further atrocities, and the weapons provided by European Union states? These European states, particularly Germany, but also France, Italy and Britain, which is not a member of the EU but which is coming to these meetings, have the blood of dead Palestinians on their hands. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that fact and condemn it? That is why people will be protesting outside the Dáil tonight and at the weekend.
Sentiment score: -0.26
It is because of the complicity of European and western countries with the slaughter in Gaza.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Russia is a brutal imperialist power. Is that what the Taoiseach is looking for?
Sentiment score: -0.31
And sell weapons to Israel.
Sentiment score: -0.44
To sell weapons to Israel.
Sentiment score: -0.44
27. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his recent attendance at the commemoration for the liberation of Auschwitz. [9491/25]
Sentiment score: 0.00
All my active political life, I have been campaigning against antisemitism and racism and campaigning to remind people of the horrors of the Holocaust. When David Irving, the Nazi apologist, came to meetings in this country to deny that the Holocaust ever happened, I was the organiser of the protests against it. I arranged for Jewish Auschwitz survivors to tour this country, to speak on national television and to speak about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people. It is precisely because we must remember the horror that the Holocaust was, and say "Never again", that we must not put any impediment in the way of calling out other instances of dehumanisation, racism, apartheid and genocide, particularly when those guilty of genocidal crimes, as Israel is now, and in the dock in the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice for genocide and crimes against humanity, are using the memory of the Holocaust to legitimise its crimes against the Palestinians. In that context, we have the adoption by the Government, without any notification, of the IHRA definition, which it knows is controversial and which says, for example, that it is antisemitic to describe the Israeli state project as a racist state project. It says that in the guidelines. Many Jewish Holocaust survivors have condemned that definition because it is loaded in favour of the state of Israel and yet the Government decided to adopt it without any proper debate about the context.
Sentiment score: -0.46
That is not true. You are misleading people.
Sentiment score: -0.36
Many do not feel comfortable with that definition. Why does the Taoiseach not deal with that?
Sentiment score: -0.20
As long as German and American weapons flow, the genocide continues.
Sentiment score: -0.44
There would be no Hamas if it were not for Israel committing these crimes.
Sentiment score: -0.34
Hamas did not exist 25 years ago. Israel has been committing crimes for decades.
Sentiment score: 0.04