Our electricity prices are among the most expensive in Europe, with Irish families paying, on average, €180 extra for electricity annually.

This is partly as a result of Irish families being forced to subsidise the cost of electricity, grid connections and backup supplies for existing and already planned speculative data centres.

The Government decided in 2018 to stop the practice whereby those struggling to pay electricity bills were subsidising these speculative developers and instead make data centres pay their own costs. When will the Government reduce electricity costs by stopping this data centre subsidy?

Last October I pointed out that one in four people in Ireland at that point could not afford to heat and light their homes. Electricity prices way ahead of 2019, gas and solid fuel also ahead of 2019.

As a result families’ heating bills have gone up dramatically and that has been compounded by increased carbon taxes and the subsidising of data centres.

This is what I said then: https://denisnaughten.ie/2021/10/07/we-need-to-take-a-strategic-approach-to-fuel-poverty-rising-prices/