Regulators don’t know the impact of AI, voters are reminded of it every day
The Dublin InQuirer recently put a question to Irish Water that should have been easy to answer: how much water do data centres around the country actually use? The utility’s figure, dating from 2021, was about 810 megalitres a year from the public mains for the entire sector. Yet that same year, Meta reported withdrawing 928 megalitres for its Clonee campus alone. One company, one site, more than the national total. Asked to explain its methodology, Irish Water couldn’t.
It’s that gap between what we’re told and what’s true that is carrying data centres from the county council agenda to the canvaser’s clipboard. Last month, a UN report on AI’s environmental footprint held Ireland up as “a live cautionary example” of infrastructure growth outpacing energy planning. And this week the CSO confirmed data centres consumed almost a quarter of our electricity in 2025, which is roughly what every urban household in the State uses combined, and heading past 30% as the AI build-out accelerates.
The Government’s response has been a masterclass in reassurance. Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien said it’s all being “managed and planned appropriately”. The same week, a government-commissioned KPMG report announced that data centres “enabled” 875,000 jobs and €100 billion in economic activity. Enabled. A word doing so much heavy lifting it should be registered with the EPA.
Speaking of which: the EPA’s register of large groundwater abstractions contains precisely zero data centres, despite operators openly discussing boreholes as an alternative to the stressed public mains. And under EU rules, every data centre drawing 500 kilowatts or more has been obliged since 2024 to report its energy and water use annually to Brussels. The European Commission’s first analysis found that only 18 Irish facilities – some 15% – bothered. There are no penalties for silence. An Taisce’s Elaine McGoff put it best: “If you’re not using very much, prove it”.
Meanwhile, Hannah Daly of UCC told the Oireachtas AI committee that planned expansion could add 5.8 gigawatts of demand, which is roughly equal to the highest peak ever recorded for the entire country, all sectors, everything, at once. The new connection rules will let data centres generate their own power, with only 80% required from renewables, and only after a six-year ‘glide path’. Six years is a long, long time to run gas turbines while calling it a transition.
If our public representatives think this stays a policy-wonk squabble, they should look west. In Utah last month, the State Senate president, who is one of the most powerful Republicans there, lost his primary after backing a data centre near the Great Salt Lake. A county commissioner was more blunt: “Do I think that the data centre vote cost me the election? Yes I do.”
In Ireland, a report from Friends of the Earth said data centre demand adds €90 a year to the average household bill. These figures are being confirmed at kitchen tables across the country, whatever about Kildare Street.
The Government insists it can manage the demand. Maybe. But you can’t manage what you refuse to measure, and voters, unlike Irish Water, can count.
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