Senator Malcolm Noonan

for decades.

The point as well that Paul made about the small nuclear reactors, the modular reactors, there's only a couple of demonstration projects out there.

And he's correct in saying there could be 10, 15 years before we see anything that's scalable, that can be scaled up into a commercial operation.

We don't have a regulatory framework in this country.

And I think we're wasting energy and time on an issue while we have the infrastructure for renewables, to scale up renewables at pace in Ireland now,

and that's where we should be focusing our energy, but also looking at rational use of energy.

Data centres are eating up a huge amount of the available, and particularly the new renewables that are coming on stream.

We have to have a look at that, as well as perhaps even maybe talking about slowing down our economy a little bit so we can catch up with infrastructure.

We don't have the infrastructure for nuclear, and I think it's important absolutely to have the debate, and we'd be delighted

to have a lengthy discussion at the Climate Committee about that.

But certainly legislating for it now is not an option.

While we have

2030 targets to meet.

We're going to fall way, way short on those.

And now here we are discussing nuclear power.

Well, I do think that we need to look at our own indigenous industry here.

We need to, you know, there's a huge overinvestment in tech and AI in this country.

And the reality is if we move into that data center race, the same as Denmark and other countries, we are going to face a huge challenge.

And who's that going to fall back on?

Well, if we have, particularly with data centers, Matt, I think the reality is