Last month, the secretary general at the Department of Environment, Climate and Energy stepped in at the last minute for her Minister, Darragh O’Brien, at a clean energy event.
She told the event that data centres were eating up all of our energy supply.
With this one throwaway comment, Oonagh Buckley attracted more headlines and political attention than most senior civil servants would be comfortable with.
“We’re having to even think about prioritising what is the social need of the demand – is it housing or is it AI?” she asked. “We’re going to have to think much more about managing demand.”
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As existential questions about our infrastructure continue to plague the Government, Jack Horgan-Jones is reporting in our lead story today that data centres would be able to use “private wires” to power themselves independently from the ESB power grid.
Big energy users would be able to build and operate electricity infrastructure, including between power sources and data centres, under a policy that will be published next month.
It comes after Sean O’Driscoll, head of the ESRI and a member of the Government’s new infrastructure tax force, warned on Tuesday that Ireland cannot expect to attract companies “like Apple, Microsoft, Google into Ireland and say to them: ‘we’d like some of your jobs, but we’re not going to provide you with data centres.’ We can provide them with data centres if we invest in our infrastructure,” he said.
On the subject of infrastructure, Michael McDowell also has an interesting column today on how to reform our planning system and neuter the constant issue of judicial reviews being taken against planning decisions.
RPZs
The Government promised us that it wasn’t afraid to take unpopular decisions on housing. It probably didn’t anticipate them being unpopular with their own ministers, though.
We are reporting this morning that thousands of short-term holiday lettings on the west coast and elsewhere will require planning permission as a result of emergency laws extending Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) nationwide by the end of this week.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and, more importantly, Kerry TD, Michael Healy-Rae tells The Irish Times that he is “extremely concerned” about the impact this policy would have on his constituency. In advance of the law changing, Killarney is the only part of Kerry currently covered by RPZs.
This means that the entire Kerry coastline from Listowel down to Kenmare is dotted with Airbnb style lettings, which may be crucial to rural tourism, which will all now be forced to apply for planning permission.
Asked if he wished to comment, Mr Healy-Rae did in his own inimitable style: “Isn’t it a major concern of mine?”
This issue likely won’t escape the notice of senior Government ministers hailing from some of Ireland’s most bucolic constituencies, including Kerrywoman Norma Foley, who are almost certain to face ferocious representations from unhappy Airbnb hosts on this issue.
Trouble could also be brewing between two ministerial James’ on the impact RPZ reforms will have on students.
At a press conference yesterday, Minister for Housing James Browne told reporters that there will be no special exemption for students under new RPZ legislation. This was despite an appeal for such an exemption coming from Minster for Further and Higher Education James Lawless. The pair had been due to meet yesterday, but that has been deferred to next week.
Immigration
Elsewhere in the paper, Conor Gallagher and Martin Wall are reporting on the decision agreed at Cabinet yesterday to buy the Citywest Hotel and make it a permanent processing centre for International Protection Applicants.
As the annual bill for using private providers to accommodate people who come to Ireland seeking asylum has breached €1 billion a year, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is under pressure to find ways to provider 14,000 State-owned beds for asylum seekers by 2028.
Buying Citywest will cost the State €148.2 million, but Mr O’Callaghan has predicted that the Government “will have got our money back in terms of the investment” after four years. The company that runs the hotel received more than €18 million between January and March of this year, for accommodating both international protection applicants and Ukrainian refugees.
And finally, Joe Brennan is reporting in Business on the Government moving yesterday to lift the State’s remaining €500,000 executive pay cap at bailed-out banks after selling its remaining shares in AIB.
Best Reads
With the inauspicious image of a fox who drowned in the fountain outside Government buildings yesterday, Miriam Lord writes about the Groundhog Day style stagnant exchanges between Opposition and Government on the perma-crisis of housing
While writing about the Irish presidency, the job that nobody seems to want, Kathy Sheridan offers up a rollicking read on the delirious days of the 2011 election.
And Sally Hayden is reporting from Beirut on the “sense of panic and deepening fears of a wider conflict” in the Middle East, with aerial attacks and missiles being fired between Israel and Iran
Playbook
The Dáil schedule today is being dominated by emergency legislation to extend RPZs to the entire country. After a housing rally outside Leinster House last night, Labour published its own emergency amendments to the legislation which it says would introduce a two year rent freeze and fine landlords up to €100,000 for breaking the law.
The Dáil schedule looks like this:
09.00 Topical Issues
10.00 Private Members’ Business is a Motion from the Independent and Parties Technical Group on public transport experiences
12.00 Leaders’ Questions
12.34 Other Members’ Questions
12.42 Questions on policy or legislation
13.12 Motions without debate, which is Finance (Local Property Tax and Other Provisions) (Amendment) Bill 2025 – Financial Resolution.
14.13 Government business, which is devoted to getting through second stage, committee stage and remaining stages of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill 2025, the new RPZ reforms
19.47 Government business then moves to committee stage of the Mental Health Bill 2024
22.17 Deferred division on the: Criminal Law (Prohibition of the Disclosure of Counselling Records) Bill 2025, Ruth Coppinger’s bill to ban the use of counselling notes in rape trials
The Seanad schedule looks like this:
10.30 Commencement matters
11.30 Order of Business
14.00 Government business, first slot of which is for Statements on Food Promotion and New Markets
15.30 Followed by another Government business slot, for Statements on the Farrelly Commission Report
17.00 Private Members’ Business, which is a motion on enterprise matters and business supports for SME’s
It’s a busy day for Committees, with all of the following taking place on the Leinster House campus today: the HSE are appearing before the disability matters committee, Hiqa and the minister for older people are appearing before the health committee to answer questions on nursing homes, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be talking to politicians about the Israeli Bond Programme and the Committee on Social Protection will hear from the ESRI, which is proposing a new Child Benefit tier to challenge child poverty. This comes after the Taoiseach signalled this week that such a measure is on the table for Budget 2026.
You can read the full committee schedule here.
