Richard Boyd Barrett: Make Data Centres Pay for Energy Crisis

I'm with Deputy Covenger in the first slot. Okay Minister, the budget is coming up and as you know, sorry I moved the motion, I have to formally move our motion, Minister the budget is coming up and the cost of living crisis that is impacting huge numbers of people is on everybody's lips, added of course to a housing crisis that is obliting the lives of so many and the question that really is being asked by people is are you going to help people who are struggling in this country and in particular, well there are many aspects to the cost of living crisis, the cost of accommodation and housing, the cost of childcare, the cost of public transport, the cost of groceries and food but an absolutely critical issue for hundreds and hundreds of thousands, for everybody really, is the cost of energy and thanks to Donald Trump, everybody now is going to face, are facing, not just future tens, are facing higher electricity, energy and fuel bills. Shame by the way on people in this house, not many of them I'm glad to say but shame on anybody who ever thought Donald Trump was going to do anything good for the world because not only has he reigned death and destruction, helped Israel reign death and destruction on the people of Palestine, people of the Middle East and done horrible things to many different groups of people but now every single person in this country and across the world is paying an economic price for his policies. So there are going to be people this winter again who will not be able to pay their electricity bills and their energy bills because of his warmongering, his misguided, immoral policies and the government is offering little assistance to those people. They're offering the red carpet of course to Donald Trump at the weekend but offering little assistance to the ordinary people, hundreds of thousands of them, more than 300,000 that are in arrears for their electricity bills, can't pay or are seriously struggling to pay their energy bills and of course it's not just electricity, our motion relates to electricity prices but our proposals actually are about trying to help people just struggling generally with the cost of energy, whether it's gas or electricity and when you take the two, more than half a million households in this country are in arrears for either their gas or electricity bills and that is set to get worse because of Trump. So we're making a very simple proposal in this motion and that is to help people who are struggling, not just those in arrears but every single household could get some help, namely a 500 euro energy credit to help them with their bills, their electricity bills and to give an additional 500 euro to every single household with a registered disability in this country and to pay for that by imposing a levy on the data centres which would raise a levy which amounts to making the data centres pay the same price for electricity as householders are paying. Because I don't know how many people know, we certainly want to alert people to know and we've been trying to alert people and some people may know, others probably don't know, is that while ordinary people are struggling paying their electricity and energy bills and the price hikes resulting from the policies of Trump and data centres as we'll go on to discuss, the data centres who are now using almost a quarter of the electricity in this country are paying half the price per unit of electricity that ordinary householders are paying. A shocking fact, data centres that are owned by the billionaire tech companies who are making absolutely obscene profits pay half the price for their electricity that ordinary householders pay. It's absolutely disgusting and completely unjustifiable and it's worth going through the profits of the main owners of the data centres which are proliferating across the country, hoovering up a quarter of the electricity in the country, soon to be a third of the electricity, almost 80% of the electricity in the Dublin area being hoovered up by these data centres, the proliferation of which are making a mockery of any attempt to deal with climate change, also using very significant amounts of water. And who are the companies who own them? Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta. Making absolutely obscene profits. Microsoft's profits, 47 billion euro. They're Irish profits. Google, 4.5 billion euro in profits. Meta, 2.9 billion in profits. These are their annual profits. Amazon, slightly less, 22 million. But still very significant profits. So these, some of the richest companies owned by some of the richest people in the world, are being subsidised by ordinary householders who are struggling to pay their bills. And who are going to be struggling even more this winter. So we're suggesting a very, very simple idea that they will pay the same as the ordinary householders. That will raise 1.5 billion and that in turn will fund a serious bit of support for every household in the country to deal with those bills. It's worth saying for those that are in arrears, the average electricity in arrears in this country are about 500 euro. So this could help wipe out the arrears being endured on some of the poorest families. But very large numbers. Hundreds of thousands of households. And that's households. And you think about the average household, three or four people. So there's a lot of people involved, seriously struggling to pay their bills, going to struggle more. This could give them a real break. We do not think, by the way, or our policies do not stop at that. Because someone might, for example, object that, well that's just more money into the pockets of the energy companies. And of course it is true. The energy companies are cleaning up at the moment. Also making absolutely extraordinary profits. ESB, I think 975 million euro profits in the most recently available figures. But we also want to cap prices. And our wider policies, and we'll be proposing this in the budget, we want to cap the prices that they can charge ordinary householders for electricity and indeed the same for gas, for petrol, for diesel, and so on. But that's another day's work. And also, just in case anybody objects, well this is a handout to the super-rich and the multi-millionaires in this country. Believe me, people for profit would be taking that money back off the millionaires with a multi-millionaires tax that we will be again proposing. And we have proposed year in, year out, that there should be taxes on the super-wealthy. But forgetting all that, and setting all that aside, people need help now. And the government did recognise this back in 2025, for example, when they gave energy credits of 250 euro, but then withdrew them. And of course in the last budget, people with disabilities, and that's why we've also stressed the need to give additional help to people with disabilities, lost about 1,200 euro in the various cuts in supports that the government inflicted on them in the last budget. So hitting the most vulnerable, those with disabilities and their carers and so on. So we're proposing an absolutely fair and justified way to give every household some support, and to in particular give additional support to those to those with disabilities. And it's worth bearing in mind, Minister, that we have the highest electricity prices in Europe. Absolutely confirmed by the European Union during their statistical agency during the summer. The highest electricity prices. And why do we have the highest electricity prices? Well, we were told by previous Fianna Fáil governments that we needed to deregulate and liberalise the market and change the mandate of the ESB and what was the state, the state-owned electricity company, because if you introduced competition into the market, it would actually benefit the consumer. But actually the opposite happened. So prior to the deregulation of the Irish electricity market, Ireland had the lowest electricity prices. Now we have the highest. 40% higher than the EU average. That's before Trump's wars, before the impact of data centres and so on. So deregulation, privatisation of the market has benefited the private companies and the big energy providers, but has crucified ordinary householders to the extent of hundreds of thousands of people in arrears. And why pick on the data centres in terms of imposing this levy? Because the data centres are prolific, are sucking up, hoovering up huge amounts of electricity. This is to the benefit of some of the richest people in the world. And the government defends this subsidy to these people already making billions of profits on the grounds that it's critical infrastructure. Now I wonder are the government and is the minister listening to what the tech billionaires themselves are now saying? Is the technology for which the government has decided they're going to subsidise and allow to proliferate these data centres, the people which is large linked substantially to the development of AI, that even the AI tech billionaires are now saying that technology could destroy the world and destroy humanity. Now I don't actually take that very seriously because I think they're just looking for more handouts. But what it does underline is the madness of a policy of giving them a billion euro in subsidies a year and continuing to allow these data centres to proliferate. So I'd be interested to hear your response. But people will be out in the streets this Saturday on the Affordable Ireland demonstration demanding a real break in terms of the cost of living. And I think they're absolutely right to do so. But a simple measure the government could take to alleviate some of this cost of living misery is to adopt this motion.