Last week, Government published its new data centre industry plan, otherwise known as LEAP, or Large Energy User Action Plan. This plan has been lobbied for and anticipated by the industry in a country where 22 per cent of all metered electricity is used by data centres, rising to around 50 per cent in Dublin.

Until a few years ago, Government policy on data centres was not LEAP, but LTAI (Let Them At It). Then reality hit. The subsequent so-called moratorium on data centres was not a pause on construction, but on connections to the electricity grid. Even so, one of the largest projects still went ahead, Echelon’s data centre in Wicklow.

Ironically, the data centre industry became a victim of the very pathologies within our political system of stasis, ad hoc planning and myopia, which led to the Irish data centre boom in the first place. That boom was catalysed by a 2018 policy statement by Heather Humphreys, then minister for business, enterprise and innovation, bowing it appeared to the data centre industry’s desires.

Once the electricity grid was inevitably squeezed by unfettered development, and the alarms sounded, the Government was cornered. Now it is trying to back itself out of that corner.

Four things in LEAP stick out. “Green energy parks” are cited as the future, essentially a marketing term for locating data centres in sites close or adjacent to solar and wind farms, as

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