I move: That Standing Order 194 is modified in accordance with Standing Order 241(2) to provide that it be an instruction to the Committee in relation to the Gas Safety (Amendment) Bill 2026, that the Committee has power to make amendments to the Bill which are outside the scope of the existing subject matter of the Bill in order to amend the Turf Development Act 1998, in order to increase the statutory borrowing limit of Bord na Móna, and to change the title of the Bill and make other consequential amendments required to take account of the change above. I commend this motion to enable the introduction of the amendments to the Gas Safety (Amendment) Bill 2026 which are outside the scope of the Bill's original subject matter. The amendments address an outstanding issue for Bord na Móna with implications for the green transition. The purpose of this motion is to enable the committee to make certain amendments to the Gas Safety (Amendment) Bill 2026 which are beyond the scope of the Bill's original subject matter, as I said. The Bill, which completed Second Stage in the House in January of this year, addresses long-standing safety issues with regard to liquified petroleum gas and natural gas and I wish to ask the House for leave to attach amendments addressing another outstanding issue in the energy sector. New sections, which have necessitated this motion, will amend section 22(1) of the Turf Development Act 1998 which sets the statutory borrowing limit of Bord na Móna. This is currently set at €650 million. The amendment will raise this limit to €1.5 billion. The increase was requested by Bord na Móna to enable the delivery of its ten-year plan and to contribute to the achievement of targets under the national climate action plan. A higher borrowing limit will provide flexibility in how Bord na Móna funds future projects integral to the company's brown-to-green strategy which has seen it conclude all peat operations and emerge as a leading provider of renewable energy and climate solutions. It will avoid the need for large-scale asset disposal, including operational wind farms and development projects. Following the request of Bord na Móna, the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation consented to a statutory increase in the borrowing limit. The advice of the New Economy and Recovery Authority, NewERA, was sought. The authority issued a report recommending the increase. The process for consent to this change was in compliance with the requirements of section 8.23 of the code of practice for the governance of State bodies and Bord na Móna's shareholder expectation letter. Deputies may be assured that, following the increase to the statutory limit, any new borrowings on the part of Bord na Móna will require the consent of the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment and the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation. There will be an opportunity to discuss these amendments further on Committee Stage and I thank the Deputies for their support in enabling these important amendments to be debated as part of the Bill. I commend this motion to the House.

Sentiment score: 0.44

I thank Deputies for their contributions. I appreciate the assistance of Members of the House in enabling this minor but important legislative change to be discussed as part of the Gas Safety (Amendment) Bill 2026. This will enable the Government to expedite a measure which ensures Bord na Móna's future as a vital contributor to our green transition. Deputy Daly raised the issue - we may get to it as part of the second debate on the Bill - about the relationship of the Bill to the tragic incident that occurred in Creeslough. As I understand it, the Bill was not prompted at all by the Creeslough tragedy and at the time of that incident, the CRU had already published its final decision on the regulation of LPG networks and work on this legislation had actually begun. The safety amendments will bring all operators of LPG distribution networks within the scope of safety licensing by the CRU and will strengthen the commission's existing powers in regard to gas and LPG safety generally. In 2022, the memorandum of understanding was agreed upon and signed by An Garda Síochána, the Health and Safety Authority and the CRU to facilitate the sharing of information and resources between agencies. On the issues Deputy Ahern raised, there is a fundamental misunderstanding by some of the role played by data centres. I am not at all suggesting that is the case in Deputy Ahern's situation but in the minds of some of the public, data centres are part of an infrastructure that is necessary to provide entertainment to a modern generation and that somehow, the nice to have things like Netflix, TikTok or YouTube are effectively stored in these repositories. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Data centres are now what advanced factories were in the 1980s. Ultimately, they are a sharing of filing cabinets that were a feature of Georgian offices dotted around this city and elsewhere around the world. In fact, very significant reductions in energy use are a result of bringing that data management together. It is never discussed but if you had individual racks in offices rather than as part of the cloud, there would be a much greater drain on the electricity network. From an Irish perspective, the Deputy rightly identified something when he asked is this the industrial strategy or is this the direction the Government is going and where does our Department sit in it? He raised the point in a careful and balanced way and to some extent, he asked is it data centres or is it cheaper electricity for households? A fundamental part of the capacity of a household to pay for electricity is the requirement they have work. Data centres, whether we like it or not, are part of the direction of travel from the tech sector. More and more people are working from home. That is a good thing and one of the positives that came out of the pandemic, if any did. Cloud computing and cloud access provide the infrastructure to do that. Data centres are part of that. I do not see data centres as bad things at all. Yes, they are a challenge to us because we have seen underinvestment in our key infrastructure for decades, particularly in the grid and the generation of electricity. We are going through that transition so there are two things happening at the same time. We are trying to transition our immediate demand for energy from fossil fuels to renewable electricity as we are repowering the economy but we are also getting that exponential growth right at the same time as we need that clean energy, with demand driven by artificial intelligence and other advances in the tech sector. It is a particular challenge for us. We have been behind the curve but between now and 2030, over €18 billion will be invested by EirGrid into the grid. We are doing with EirGrid something like what we are doing with Bord na Móna as part of this. We are putting in core capital of €3 billion to allow EirGrid to borrow more. We are raising the borrowing limit for Bord na Móna to allow it to become an enabler. I take the Deputy's point about being careful about our relationship with oligarchs in the tech sector. What is on offer is a positive in terms of future economic growth and support for the tech sector, more generally. This morning, I spoke at a Digital Infrastructure Ireland conference. It is a body that speaks for the data centres and there was a report prepared by Jim Power. It was saying that if we do not get our act together here and do not figure out a way to allow growth in data centres, other countries will attract that. I was in Alberta, Canada, as part of the St. Patrick's Day discussions and we saw they are trying to attract data centres. By their nature, data centres are not big employers but they attract other enterprises around them. If we do not succeed in anchoring the data here, others will and they will benefit in terms of the tech jobs of the future. There is a job of work to be done.

Sentiment score: 0.26