The Government should not paint a picture of Ireland as a “renewables heaven” for domestic users because all the benefits of investment are going straight to data centres, the Dáil has heard.
The Social Democrats’ energy spokeswoman Jennifer Whitmore said there had been a large increase in renewable energy but the reality is that it is not going to households.
“That renewable energy is going straight into data centres who are paying half what domestic users are expected to pay for their electricity.
“So this is not a good news story for Irish households,” she told Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien.
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“What it means is that you’re prioritising large corporates accessing energy at half the price that individuals are having to pay and risking energy security at the same time.”
Speaking in the Dáil on her party’s Private Members’ motion on tackling soaring energy costs, she said one million homes in Ireland are suitable for solar panels. “A mere 10 panels could save the average home €450 a year in electricity cost every single year.
“It is really simple to put solar panels on a home. It takes matter of hours,” she said, adding that if they were talking about energy poverty and resilience, “solar panels are really a no-brainer for Government to deploy”.
The Minister said: “We’re actually the number one in Europe for integration of renewals into our grid.”
In 2015, 19 per cent of electricity came from renewable sources but last month it was 39 per cent, he said. Since March the Government had made significant changes to retrofitting grants and wanted to “make sure the grants are accessible to people, particularly those in the lower and middle-income brackets”.
[ Data centre expansion policy prolongs reliance on fossil fuelsOpens in new window ]
A quarter of a million homes have already been retrofitted and 53,000 in 2025. “This year I’m targeting 73,000 homes with the monies that we have from the carbon tax,” said O’Brien.
Introducing the Social Democrats’ motion, Dublin Central TD Gary Gannon proposed doubling the solar insulation grant to €3,600, adding solar panels to the Warmer Homes Scheme, and introducing a €1,000 battery storage grant.
“Why did Government cut solar grants while we lurch from one energy crisis to the next?” he asked. “The lesson was there, the lesson was clearly not learnt.”
Gannon said “solar investment will help families for a lifetime”.
Sinn Féin energy spokesman Pa Daly said energy prices had risen 11 per cent in a single month and 12 per cent over the past year but the Government’s response “has been nothing short of paralysis”.
Wholesale energy prices have collapsed and were 72 per cent lower than at their peak in 2022 but, with a commercial mandate, price gouging “is inevitable”. The Government has left the regulator “toothless” and has “refused to regulate the standing charges”.
His party introduced legislation four years ago but the Government ignored it, Daly said.
[ Iran war triggers 19% jump in Irish wholesale electricity pricesOpens in new window ]
His party colleague Louise O’Reilly hit out at Labour and the Social Democrats, saying she was “really disappointed” they backed Government’s package of supports and “locking in carbon tax increases right up to 2030”.
In the middle of an energy/poverty crisis, “the very least people should be able to expect of their representatives is that they won’t use their vote to make matters worse for ordinary people who are really, really struggling”.
Labour’s Alan Kelly hit back and said Sinn Féin did not support the measures to help people who were struggling across the industries, “which is very ironic”. He accused Sinn Féin of “practising voodoo economics” with “no carbon tax ever, no USC, no local property tax. Where in the name of God are they going to have taxation from?”
He said it was a “very strange way” of going about “looking for partners in alternative government”.
