Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West

I offer my condolences and those of the Green Party on the death of our colleague, Seamus Carroll. Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence heard from EirGrid, ESB Networks and the CRU. They raised some of the clearest concerns yet about the impact of data centres on our grid. These are not NGOs that the Government can brush off. They are State bodies and they were warning in no uncertain terms that there are trade-offs to the level of data centre growth the Government wants to pursue. Jim Gannon from the CRU stated that large AI-focused facilities can exceed 100 MW in demand, with annual electricity consumption comparable to that of around 100,000 households.
The CRU stated that data centres could account for 35% of Ireland’s electricity demand by 2035.
The Green Party believes there should be a moratorium on new data centre connections until our grid's capacity has been expanded. Is it not time that the Government, at a minimum, set restrictions on the amount of grid capacity that data centres can use? Without safeguards, these data centres will continue to push up household energy bills, which will be a disaster for energy affordability and for our private targets.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30