Naas data centres and AI demand
Deputy Cronin calls for reassessment of planned Naas data centres because of pressures on electricity, water, the grid, local communities and energy costs. The Taoiseach points to EU AI regulation, Ireland’s data-centre policy and the sector’s role in the ICT economy.
There is huge concern in north Kildare about two monstrous data centres that are planned for outside Naas, all to feed the insatiable need for AI. Data centres already consume a huge amount of discounted electricity, while homes and small businesses are paying increasingly high energy bills. Before we broke for the summer, and indeed at a meeting in Naas two weeks ago, people's main concerns were around our grid infrastructure, water, the humming noise from these data centres and the increasing costs to subsidise AI. However, in the last couple of weeks, the CEOs of the top three AI companies have been ringing the alarm bells on AI. While this all sounds very sci-fi - "Terminator 7" nearly - it is unusual for venture capitalists to look for states to bring in some guardrails. I do not know if this is hyperbole or if it is the stock market, but the Government must pull the plug on these data centres and starve the beast of the data. There is an explosion-----
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-----in data centres all around Kildare. We need to reassess where we are going.
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We must protect our grid and reassess the impact of AI. What is the Government going to do about this?
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-----but at least within Europe, we have the European Union AI Act which has been in force since August. That is the first European Union-wide risk-based legal framework for AI, banning unacceptable uses and imposing stringent requirements on high-risk systems. I urge a note of caution that those who were driving this for the last four or five years are now saying "Hang on a second".
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It is, but they have developed the market fairly significantly. I am not saying. I believe in regulation. Europe is the most regulated; the US is not.
The second point I make is that we have effectively had a moratorium on data centres for four or five years in Ireland. That gets lost in all of the debate.
Yes, prior to that we had a significant growth, but data centres are an integral part of the ICT industry. We just cannot neatly separate them out as people are endeavouring to do.