Charlie Weston

And one of the things they were saying is maybe governments should take on some of the charges associated with upgrading these grids because they're huge in every country, but they're particularly bad in this country.

You know, a huge part of our bill, as I say, is made up of these grid fees or network charges in various forms.

So maybe the government should take over a bit of that.

And the Taoiseach has kind of hinted that maybe the government will.

You know, why should the massive bill for all of the upgrades, all of the investment, and we're talking here something like 18 billion euros over the next few years in upgrading the grid,

why should that all land at the feet of users, in other words, consumers and businesses?

And remember that data centers pay a cheap rate anyway.

They pay half the

electricity costs of consumers and use a huge proportion of the electricity.

That's it, Matt.

Yeah, these large users, they get a discount because they're big users.

Traditionally, they were big employers.

So, you know, so big industry always got a discount.

That's all very well if you have a big factory like Intel and you have thousands of people in it.

But data centers are incredibly intensive users of electricity, and it is costing us an arm and a leg to get them into the system.

Now, they have been told that they will have to help producing their own electricity in

And they're allowed to put in private wires, which is fine.

But they're still, you know, they're a big drag on the system.

And it's one of the reasons why it's costing so much to upgrade the grid to kind of connect up them.

And because of the sheer amount of electricity they're using.