The most senior official in the Department of environment and energy said today that we will have to decide between building more homes or expanding our data centre capacity because our energy infrastructure cannot handle both. This is an extraordinary intervention. The Labour Party has long been sounding alarm bells about the scale of data centre construction. We have serious concerns about their energy consumption, the pressure they are placing on our grid and the dirty fuels they will have to use going forward because new renewable energy sources cannot keep pace with their exponential growth and energy demand. While data centres are currently responsible for 21% of our overall energy consumption, that figure will grow to 30% by the end of this decade. The Taoiseach, in particular, has been dismissive of our concerns. The Government's policy appears to be to give more and more data centres the green light. Will the Government now ignore the warnings of its own officials or will it take up the Labour Party's call for a moratorium on new data centres until we can at least be sure they will not put further pressure on our grid and can be self-sustained by energy from renewable sources?

I thank Deputy Ahern. This whole issue of energy security and supply is an important one. We all know where we need to get to in the context of renewable and offshore energy. We know that we need to turbocharge - pardon the pun - getting there in every way we possibly can. It is about a balanced approach, however. We do not want our country to be closed to investment and investment opportunities. I know Deputy Ahern does not wish that either. We are also seeing data centres themselves changing the way they go about their operations. The way forward on this will be for the Government to work on the large energy users connection policy. I would ideally like to see that published in the autumn. It will show what the policy approach should be from here out to the medium term.