Ray D'Arcy

So that means that it takes a little more infrastructure to get the electricity from one place to another.

That's one factor.

Another factor is that we use more gas than our European neighbours.

And just remember that we are four times more expensive than Hungary.

Four times more expensive than Hungary.

I'm just reminding you of that.

And the thing that hit me between the eyes was that 20% of the draw on our electricity is by data centres.

So 20% of our electricity is used by data centres.

And at peak times, because of the draw on it and the grid can't handle it, it pushes up the price.

So other countries have single-figure draw.

Some countries have only 1.5% of their total electricity is used in data centres.

Ours is 20% because we have all these big tech companies here.

So that's one of the reasons that we are way above the European average.

And I'm just thinking, and maybe this isn't the way the world works, and maybe I'm being totally naive, but

tech companies, and they're all appearing, a lot of the tech companies are appearing in front of a committee today, the TikToks and the Metas and the Googles, and I don't know if Apple are in there.

So they are paying billions and billions of tax to the Irish government.

They're building data centres, which the data centres are part of the reason that our electricity prices are through the roof.

And yet, we're not getting any of the good stuff back.

Now, people would say, well, you are, you know, because the government is pushing it into infrastructure and building rail stations and bypasses for the Ryder Cup and all that sort of thing.

But it doesn't seem fair that they're part of the reason