Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests. I have a few questions, the first of which is for Mr. Hughes. How does he see the interplay between the objectives of a just transition and balanced regional development, especially with regard to Project Ireland 2040? This is in the context of the regional enterprise strategies where we are trying to drive investment and growth into the regions and out of the bigger urban centres.

I will now go through the other questions, which are related. With regard to policy around data centres, I am aware there are energy guzzlers. Does the Department have any green energy requirements for data centres that IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland or whoever might support? This is aside from the commitments to green energy for data centres and declarations made publicly by some of the tech companies. Is there a policy to drive the development of data centres outside the greater Dublin area? How is the Department getting on with that? What is IDA Ireland actively doing in this regard? What are the successes in this area? It is an issue I am familiar with and I will give an example. In north Mayo the former Asahi site has had planning permission, granted for a several years, for a data centre. A high-speed fibre technology cable is coming from North America to there. It is a break-out point and there is a planning application for a combined heat and power high-efficiency biomass plant. Yet, they cannot seem to get a data centre there. It is a brownfield site and appears to tick all the boxes, but nothing has happened. It is a puzzle as to why this is the case. What are the Department and its agencies doing about this?