Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“I have several questions. Why are the surgeons who performed hundreds of unnecessary surgeries on children still operating? Surgeon B could go into Temple Street tomorrow and do an osteotomy. Those surgeons are not being prevented from doing that. There is a lot of talk about rebuilding trust and so on, but all that seems very previous to me when, literally, the surgeons who are responsible are still operating in Temple Street and Cappagh. I think they should be suspended, but, at the very least, they should be suspended from carrying out osteotomies. Is there any ongoing investigation into motive? My understanding is that if a child had private health insurance a surgeon would get around €1,500 for doing one side and another €750 on top for doing the other side.”
“We should not have to be here dealing with apologies. We should not need to have future apologies. This month marks the 20th anniversary of Terence Wheelock's death. His family will be on the streets this Saturday still fighting for justice and still demanding a public inquiry. They and others take inspiration from the O'Farrell family.”
“In 2018, the Minister stated in the House: Tragedies happen in families throughout this country but the reason the tragedy of Shane O'Farrell merits public discussion and debate in this House and public investigation is because it reveals a very significant inadequacy and inefficiency at the heart of the criminal justice system. What is still not known and what is not stated is why. There has been failure upon failure of the criminal justice system. Was that simply inefficiencies in the system or was it something more? Was Gridziuska protected because he was an informant for the Garda? That is a significant question that remains unanswered and that has wider implications. I again my lead from the family, but I still feel there are Garda papers to be published in this regard. We could do with having clarity on that matter.”
“I really welcome the apology, but I also emphasise that an apology is not a replacement for the truth. There is a need to go further. The Minister was at pains to emphasise that the facts are known. He said we could spend many years inquiring into these facts that are already known. He said that what he is doing "will not need to establish any facts since the relevant facts are already known." I just worry, and I take my lead fully from the family on this. An important fact is sitting unanswered and not mentioned by the Minister.”
“That was combined with what others have referred to, namely the forensic detail of how this happened and how it simply should not have happened at many points down the line because Gridziuska was free and in a position to be driving that car. I sincerely welcome the apology. Effectively, it is a repudiation of the results of the scoping inquiry. That inquiry found that the State had nothing to apologise for, had nothing to inquire into and that there was no need for a public inquiry. The outcome of the extremely lengthy scoping document, which went far beyond what we normally think of as scoping, was to say that the State had nothing to apologise for. It is effectively a repudiation of the role GSOC played and of the latter's reports. That should be recognised.”
“The main thing I want to do is to pay tribute, as has been done by many others, to Lucia, Jim and Shane's sisters. For 14 years, you should have been able to grieve and live your lives. Instead, you had to fight for justice. We should remember that the family was not fighting for justice against nobody. The state was on the other side and was blocking the search for justice. The State apology is a vindication of what the family has been fighting for for 14 years. It has to be over ten years ago that I met Lucia because I was an MEP at the time. I remember her specifically making the point about Shane being a UCD law graduate, as I was. What struck me was the burning indignation and anger at the injustice, how Shane had been killed and should not have been killed.”
“If restrictions on data centres are brought in, which with the Taoiseach would not agree, for environmental reasons or to safeguard our water and energy, Amazon or Google could sue us for billions of euro. There is no way for Ireland to withdraw once it has been fully implemented, only the EU as a whole can do so. Why tie the hands of future Governments and subordinate us to foreign multinational companies?”
“The Taoiseach and the Government are using Trump's tariff threats as an excuse to exhume the full ratification of CETA and bring it back from the dead. There are good reasons that the Supreme Court buried it back in 2022 when it ruled that the ratification of CETA would be unconstitutional because it gives extreme powers to shadowy private investor courts that have no democratic oversight and cannot be overruled by Irish judges. If CETA is passed and fully ratified as the Government wants, big multinational companies will be able to sue the Irish State for loss of future earnings if it does anything that impinges on their profits - it is known as indirect expropriation - regardless of the social or environmental costs. All they would have to do is incorporate a subsidiary in Canada to be able to use CETA's investor court system, ICS.”
“This is a genocide made in America, armed, funded and supported by President Trump and President Biden before him. We need action on top of words now from the Government. We need the occupied territories Bill for goods and services, we need to stop the overflights and we need to ban Israeli bonds.”
“I wish to pay condolences to Dr. Ali al-Najjar who works in Sligo University Hospital. On Friday, his sister-in-law, Alaa, a paediatrician in Khan Younis, said goodbye to her husband Hamdi and their ten children before she went to work to care for injured babies who barely survived Israeli attacks. However, after Israeli air strikes a few hours later, seven of her children's charred bodies came to her hospital, while two could not be found under the rubble. Only one of her ten children survived along with her husband who is now missing an arm, has brain damage and has serious shrapnel wounds in his chest. Nine children under ten years of age, all murdered by Israel while their mother worked to save the lives of other children. How does a family possibly recover from that?”
“I presume the Taoiseach saw the horrific video of a six-year-old girl burning in Gaza. Her name is Ward. Thankfully, she actually survived but her family did not and approximately 20,000 other Palestinian children in Gaza have not. It is time for action to go with the words. It is time to stop the overflights. It is time to ban the sale of Israeli war bonds and it is time for full sanctions on goods and services. We need action from the Government and we need it now.”
“Rather than dividing the working class by attacking particular groups and pitting people against each other, we should be fighting for universal, non-means tested payments, higher wages and universal public housing for all. We should be trying to lift the level of how we treat refugees, not drag it down. That is how we fight the far right, by addressing the poverty and inequality it exploits, not by making poverty and inequality even worse.”
“It is disgraceful that Sinn Féin's amendment urges the Government to go even further in its attacks on refugees. This is part of a failed tactic where Sinn Féin chases after the far right for votes. It did not work during the previous two elections last year. in fact, it backfired disastrously by centring and problematising the issue of immigration and taking pressure off the Government that has been responsible for the housing crisis, cost-of-living crisis and everything else because it suggests the problem is actually immigrants, which is wrong. All it means is that Sinn Féin ends up participating in attacks on refugee families and making those attacks even worse. It does not even gain anything politically. It just cedes more and more ground to the far right and honest, ordinary people see it as being dishonest and flip-flopping.”
“I do not think this is an example of petty penny-pinching by the Government. I think the Government knows it will cost more money than it will save but it is willing to spend money on perfomative, expensive cruelty. It is like the chartered deportation flights. They make no sense in economic terms and are an extraordinarily expensive way of deporting people but it is about the theatre. Similarly, this is about saying to people, "Don't worry, we are dealing with these Ukrainians. Look, we have cut the payment from €800 to €600." This Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Lowry lackey Government is so right wing it is more interested in pandering to anti-immigration sentiment and the far right than in preventing even more families becoming homeless, while Fine Gael champions the idea of supporting and standing with Ukraine.”
“This cut will have an immediate impact on nearly half of all Ukrainian refugees living in this State. Currently, 37,500 people rely on the ARP to keep a roof over the heads. The Government knows that many of the hosts would not be hosting if they were not getting the €800 payment. In one survey, three quarters of hosts said they would not be able to continue to accommodate Ukrainians if the payment was cut. An even higher percentage - 86% - told the Irish Red Cross that the payment is important to them continuing to host. The Government knows that cutting this payment will mean families being evicted onto the streets, forced to return to an active war zone, or - in circumstances where they can - going into the private rental market and adding to the pressures there. The point has been made repeatedly that this makes no financial sense.”
“Fine Gael's manifesto for the previous general election stated it would "Stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes." It would, it said, "unequivocally support Ukraine". That promise, like all the other promises of this Government, lasted approximately 100 days. It was not worth the paper it was written on. One of the first things the Government is doing is slashing supports to Ukrainian people who have fled to Ireland, by cutting the ARP from €800 to €600 per month. The Government started kicking Ukrainian refugees out of hotels ahead of the elections last year in an attempt to appease the far right. As a result, since last May, the percentage of Ukrainian refugees relying on the ARP has risen from 27% to 46%. One in two Ukrainian refugees is now reliant on this payment.”
“These beautiful and innocent badgers are being made a scapegoat for industrial farming practices where dairy herd sizes have ballooned. With bigger herds and more intensive farming comes more disease. The Department of agriculture admits that killing badgers is not sustainable in the long term due to its ultimate impact on badger ecology. It knows it does not work to control bovine tuberculosis. Why on earth did it then slaughter more than 7,000 badgers last year, which was the highest number in a decade? Will the Minister of State commit today to end the irrational, State-sanctioned cruelty and biodiversity destruction?”
“Other wild animals, including more than 4,000 foxes in the past ten years, also get trapped in the snares. Ireland is the only country in Europe committed to the large-scale, Government-licensed slaughter of badgers. The snaring of badgers is banned in Scotland and Wales. According to opinion polls, in excess of two thirds of people in Ireland want it banned as well. England has promised to phase out killing badgers and replace it with a vaccination programme following scientific research that found that all the slaughter had no significant impact on bovine tuberculosis incidents in cattle. Fifteen years of research by the Department of agriculture in Ireland also found that vaccination is no less effective than culling. The real cause of the bovine tuberculosis epidemic is not badgers-----”
“I welcome the Minister of State’s enthusiasm and fine words. The question is whether we are going to get the action to go with it. I raise a concrete case with him today and seek action on it. It is an issue where the State is not only failing to do enough to protect biodiversity, but is actually destroying it. The issue relates to the ongoing slaughter of badgers by the Department of agriculture. The Minister of State will have seen “The Journal Investigates” report in which it states that the Department has killed more than 66,000 badgers in the past ten years. The way the badgers are killed is horrific. They are trapped in snares leading to internal organ damage, ruptured bladders and even disembowelment. This includes pregnant and lactating badgers, leaving their cubs to starve to death.”
“The Government is doing nothing - hear no evil, see no evil - about the thousands of tonnes of munitions flying illegally through Irish airspace to be used in this genocide. When I raised this with the Tánaiste two weeks ago, I got a letter back from the Minister for Transport saying that an examination is ongoing and that a considerable amount of documentation has had to be scrutinised. This has been happening for nine months, during which time the airlines have said it is happening and this has been on their waybills. We know a draft report was finished on 13 March. When will the report be published? When will action be taken to stop these overflights?”
“It is true that the Irish Government has good, strong words of criticism of the war crimes of Israel. We could do with a very clear statement describing what is happening as genocide. What actions, however, does the Government take? Ultimately, its defence is that it is less complicit - less complicit than Starmer or Biden or Trump. The Minister of State and his Government, however, are still complicit because they are not acting to stop a genocide. They are dragging their heels on the occupied territories Bill. We heard from Deputy O'Gorman about the advice that he received and that has been published by The Ditch . The Attorney General was clear: it is a political choice not to proceed with that Bill. The Government is allowing Israeli war bonds to be traded in the European Union, authorised by the Irish Central Bank, shamefully.”
“The Palestinian people are being starved to death in Gaza. We have heard again and again, rightly, about the 14,000 babies who face death from deliberate starvation in the next 48 hours. This is while the Israeli Government is openly boasting about the ethnic cleansing being carried out. Let us not forget that the bombing continues, with 82 Palestinians killed by this indiscriminate bombing in the last 24 hours. We should not allow a few late weasel words in the West to obscure the fundamental truth that this is a genocide made in the West. It is one that could not be happening if it were not for the funding, the arming and the supporting by the US, Germany, Britain, the European Union and many other countries. What does the Irish Government do?”
“Instead of including them, the Government has chosen to target retrofitting grants and tax breaks at better-off homeowners and landlords because they are the core voter base of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the right-wing Independents. It is a disgrace that this kind of self-serving political logic still dominates in the midst of a climate emergency. We need to recognise that this is an existential crisis and immediately move to universal free retrofitting for all. Exempting external wall insulation is a small but important part of doing so.”
“The grants on offer are entirely inadequate to meet the costs involved, and the practice of individual home retrofitting by a hodgepodge of private contractors is incredibly inefficient. What is needed is a State-wide public retrofitting programme carried out for free by a State construction company. It would go into towns and villages and retrofit whole estates at the same time, regardless of whether they are privately owned or owned by the council. This would generate huge economies-of-scale savings and ensure the benefits of climate action are shared equally by all. At the moment, low-paid workers and renters are being excluded from retrofitting although they are the ones who would benefit most from lower energy bills.”
“We do not want people to be penalised for insulation." However, penalisation is exactly what the Government is doing every day, not just by leaving people at risk of imprisonment for insulating their homes but also by refusing to fund the cost of home retrofits, even though retrofitting is a win–win for people, for the cost of living and for our environment. Anyone who gets a home retrofitted, including Clive and Samantha, is always delighted at how much more comfortable that home is and how much they save on their energy bills. When you talk to Clive and Samantha about it, despite everything they have been through, you note that they sing the praises of external insulation, but the Government persists in forcing people to pay thousands of euro to finance home retrofits.”
“The Bill does this by exempting external wall insulation from planning permission, except in certain very limited circumstances - for example, if a building is a protected structure or is in an architectural conservation area. This is similar to the current exemption that exists for installing solar panels, and the reasoning for it is the same. The climate and cost-savings benefits outweigh any minor aesthetic impacts in the overwhelming majority of cases. The presumption should be that external wall insulation, just like solar panels, is exempt from planning permission. It is not rocket science; it is simple common sense. When I raised this with the Taoiseach, he told me the following: "We want people to insulate.”
“Since January, it has reneged on previous Government commitments to introduce minimum BER standards for the private rental sector. It has reneged on banning imports of fracked gas and is now welcoming in fracked LNG from the US. It is trying to overturn the moratorium on constructing new data centres in the Dublin area and turning Ireland into a Wild West for the uncontrolled fossil-fuelled expansion of AI and data centres. Therefore, I do not trust the Government to take action on this very simple issue either. People Before Profit and I are introducing this Bill to get the Government to move on this as quickly as possible. The purpose of our Bill is to ensure that outrageous situations such as the one experienced by Clive and Samantha Ryan will never happen again.”
“This was clearly a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. One arm of the State, the SEAI, was rightly promoting retrofitting and the reduction of carbon emissions, which would reduce the family's energy bills, while another, South Dublin County Council, was implementing planning laws that the Government had failed to update in line with the legally binding climate action laws. It is the Government that is at fault. The Minister for Housing has himself admitted that new legislation is needed and has said public consultation will be held on it this year. However, given the roll-back of climate action across a range of areas by the right-wing Fianna Fáil–Fine Gael–Lowry Government, I will not be holding my breath.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Planning and Development Act 2000 to exempt external wall insulation from planning permission, with the exception of certain limited circumstances. This Bill is inspired by a particular case, that of Clive and Samantha Ryan, who live in Kilnamanagh, Tallaght. In the past week, thankfully, they have finally been granted planning permission for external wall insulation that they installed on their home six years ago. This news is, of course, very welcome. It is a massive relief for the family because they were threatened with five years in prison if they did not remove the wraparound insulation. This was despite the fact that they had used a Government grant from the SEAI as well as an SEAI-approved contractor to install the insulation.”
“Every time I hear that suggestion, I hear that the Government is breaching the law and that instead of stopping to breach the law, it wants to change the law so that it will not be breaching it, without dealing with providing assessments of need in time. The fundamental issues include the years of restricting the number of college places for therapists. There are between 25 and 40 in most specialties, when there should be more than 100 a year. Other issues include the years of austerity cuts and the underfunding of the health service, the pay and numbers strategy, and the years of enabling the housing crisis to get worse so that rents and property prices rise. There is an alternative. There are plenty of actions the Government could take such as bonuses, speeding up recognition and improving training. I could go on and on.”
“It is a way of rationing resources, forcing those who can afford it to go private and saving money for the Government regardless of the human cost. When faced with determined campaigners like Cara Darmody and the Equality in Education campaigners, the Government may regret its extreme rationing of resources, which created the current crisis, but there is an attempt to find other systems to blame. The Taoiseach's remarks earlier that effectively blamed the model of CDNTs miss the point. I welcome the decision to have therapists go into schools. It makes sense, but it does not deal with the fundamental problem of the high level of vacancy. Situating therapists in schools versus in CDNTs will not deal with the fundamental issue of resources, and nor will changing the law.”
“The Minister spoke about welcome progress with the increase in the number of assessments but in the context of the increased need overwhelming the system, it is difficult to talk about progress. The reason for this is that the Government has consistently failed to plan for needs it knows exist. Not only that, it has actively ignored those needs by ensuring the assessments of individual needs are delayed. It should be emphasised, as mentioned, that this is just the start of a journey of long waiting lists, of being let down and disappointed and of parents being offered group sessions when they want their kids to get the necessary therapies and supports they need. The average waiting time for an assessment of need is now more than two years, during which a child cannot access the therapies they need in the public system.”
“It does not cost any money, to be clear; many solicitors will do it for nothing and then they will win the case and the State will pay. However, those parents who know that this exists as an avenue and so on are the ones who end up getting the assessments of need not on time but more on time than those who do not know that this is a route they can take. It is outrageous. The pattern for the Government has been one of tea and sympathy on these issues but no real action where it counts. The motion will be passed tonight - that is welcome - but then will the Government act? The problem for the Government is that the roots of this crisis run deep and are all of its own making. Fifteen years ago, 1,000 children were waiting on assessments of need; now there are more than 15,000. The HSE projects that to rise to 25,000 by the end of this year.”
“The State is breaking its own laws and then we, correctly, have to encourage people to take the State to court just to get the State to move - because it works. People know that if you take the State to court, you will get your assessment of need eventually. Similarly, by the way, you can take the State to court for not meeting your educational needs. Again, it is obscene that we have a law and that the State, the Government, is breaking its own law and then 25 families a month have to take the State to court at significant expense, not to them but to the State, in order for this to happen. The parents are absolutely right to do it - they are fighting for what they can for their kids - but it creates another inequity.”
“It is reminiscent of what you read about tsarist Russia, of people petitioning the tsar for their rights to be met. It is obscene that having to sleep outside our national Parliament urging for one's rights to be met is becoming a regular feature of disability justice campaigners. Then there is the smaller scale. I am sure other Members are in the same position. What Deputy Stanley spoke about is exactly the same as the situation in Dublin South-West. The issue of parents of children with additional needs is now definitely the second issue after housing that comes to me. I now have a close relationship with solicitors whom I immediately put parents in touch with, saying, "You can take the State to court for that." That is incredible.”
“What sort of society are we living in where children have a constitutional right to an education and a clear right to an appropriate education in their community under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, where in law you have the right to an assessment of needs within six months, where we have these rights enshrined, we have had these debates, we have passed these laws, in some cases we have a Constitution and we have a UN convention, yet people have to sleep out outside the gates of the national Parliament to try to enforce what are already their legal rights? Even a basic republic is not meant to act in that fashion. You are meant to have a democratic discussion, you pass laws and the laws are meant to be implemented.”
“I thank Cara Darmody for forcing this issue onto the Dáil agenda. Her bravery in protesting outside the Dáil for 50 hours has forced the Government to sit up and pay attention. However, I want to make a very obvious point: that it is a disgrace that Cara and other disability campaigners, including the parents of children with additional needs, are having to resort to sleep-outs outside the Dáil to try to enforce their legal rights.”
“There is a chronic shortage of public health nurses in Tallaght and across the South Dublin County Council area. Babies are going without routine developmental checks, which are vital to spotting issues early and referral to appropriate services. Home-based catheterisation is another essential service that has been removed, forcing very ill patients to travel to clinics to access it. The HSE has said it is trying to recruit more public health nurses but there are not enough applicants to fill the vacancies. Once again, the housing crisis is at the root of the problem. Thousands of nurses emigrate every year because they cannot afford to rent and cannot access social or affordable housing. This is on top of the low pay and poor working conditions for nurses, also caused by understaffing and driving qualified nurses to leave the country.”
“The term "ReArm Europe" is a joke because military expenditure has gone up year on year for the past decade and is being used to suspend fiscal rules, not to build homes, to tackle healthcare crises across Europe or to help people crippled by the cost-of-living crisis but to give more money to the arms companies fuelled by debt and destruction. It is why people came together two weeks ago, at a powerful meeting, to defend neutrality and the triple lock. They will be on the streets on Saturday, 14 June at 2 p.m. Will the Taoiseach outline the timing of the Government's plans to dismantle the triple lock?”
“From the outset of Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine, we pointed out that US involvement there was not driven by any concern for self-determination and the interests of ordinary Ukrainian people but was instead driven by its own strategic interests. That has become undeniably clear under Trump. It is clear the US is only interested in Ukraine insofar as the people of Ukraine can be used to weaken Russia, and Ukraine can then be carved up for its own aims. The blackmail deal done by Trump is to steal minerals from the Ukrainian people while agreeing to Russia taking much of the land.”
“Both Housing for All and the zero tolerance strategy on gender-based violence focus on short-term refuges but nothing is being done to provide long-term secure social housing for victims of domestic violence. Does the Taoiseach accept that additional long-term social housing needs to be provided?”
“Last week, South Dublin County Council passed a People Before Profit motion to allocate long-term housing to victims of gender-based violence leaving short-term refuges. Official figures show that 32 households fleeing domestic violence were forced into emergency accommodation from January to March. However, according to service providers this massively understates the problem. The housing crisis means women either cannot leave abusive relationships or are forced to return to them once their time in a refuge is up. I spoke to a woman a few weeks ago whose time in the short-term refuge was over. She was in an absolute panic because moving into emergency accommodation meant moving outside of her support networks.”
“Residents in Applewood in Swords are facing eviction by their corporate landlord, LRC. There is no good reason for these evictions. These are no-fault evictions. LRC is refusing to offer further Part 4 tenancies, through a legal loophole which allows landlords to evict tenants without reason at the end of a tenancy if it was created before 11 June 2022. This is a tried and tested tactic by LRC. It issued 100 notices of termination on these grounds between October 2022 and April 2024. The impact on the tenants is horrific. One said, "The stress is constant. I have had a double hip replacement. I am not in a position to move. It feels hopeless." Tenants are being abandoned by this Government. Will the Government introduce emergency legislation to close the loophole and stop evictions for no reason?”
“The average rent is now more than €2,000 a month. Rents are rising faster than ever. It is a nightmare for renters and it is getting worse. The Minister for housing is speaking to the media, saying there has to be a change in the rent pressure zones. Extra fear is being felt by these renters that a landlords' government will allow landlords to hike their rents even faster. It is happening in the media; it is not happening here. Every week over the past month or so, I have been asking for statements on housing-----”
“However, they are saying to the Government that unless it indicates that housing takes priority, those data centres will gobble up the electricity and will be an obstacle to delivering the housing we need to address the housing crisis. Will the Minister therefore, at the very least, say that housing takes priority over these data centres in terms of electricity?”
“What is the response of the Department and Government? Is it to put a pause, at least, on data centres? Is the Government’s response to state, at least, that housing takes priority? The CRU is saying to the Minister very clearly that we are adding electricity capacity and that, because of the first-come, first-served nature of the system, it is being gobbled up by data centres. Let us get real about where the extra demand for electricity is coming from. It is predominantly from the big tech giants. They are at over 20% of our electricity usage now and by 2030 they will be very close to 30%. This Government signals an even brighter green light to the data centres to keep coming. It says it wants more in terms of AI and so on.”
“Therefore, more electricity capacity, or another power station, was added to the grid to assist with housing but it was gobbled up by data centres. What the CRU states is that "it does not have sufficient statutory powers to prioritise certain government policy objectives over others under current legislation". It is asking the Minister to act to state housing should take priority over big tech. Is he going to?”
“Let me quote from the recent CRU paper on policy on the connection of data centres: ESB Networks has highlighted risks that, in the absence of an adequate policy response, the potential level of data centre demand could significantly impact its ability to accommodate demand connections required to support Government policy targets such as 550,000 new homes by 2040 … It goes on to give the example that, in west Dublin, the new Castlebaggot station was initially designed to support housing growth, relieve pressure and support industrial growth, as well as future demand. It then states: However, due to the first come first served connection approach this new capacity at Castlebaggot was almost entirely used by data centres applications, leaving limited capability to support other demand needs in the area.”
“Is big tech's insatiable demand for energy to power data centres being put before the need to address the housing crisis? The recent CRU report suggests housing delivery is at risk because of the inability to connect new houses to the electricity grid as a result of the insatiable demand of data centres.”
“We need to deal with the ghost buses and roll out free, frequent and accessible public transport to people so they are not so reliant on having to drive.”