Eamon Ryan, Free State Minister for the Environment, has admitted that this winter will see rolling blackouts all over. What is more, it is being admitted that there will be an energy crisis that could last up to 4 years.
The key driver in this process is the imperialist data centres that have sprung up with terrifying speed. The Irish people are paying the price of these parasitical tech companies and their profits. As well as power cuts these data centres require enormous amounts of water to cool, putting further strain on the water infrastructure.
These data centres provide no real jobs, no real benefit whatsoever to the Irish working class. They exist entirely to service foreign multinationals. And yet new data centres built in recent years account for as much energy use as 200,000 homes per year. The Free State refused to ban or even remotely restrict the growth of these data centres, demonstrating their usual subservience to capitalist imperialist interests.
These data centres aren’t only a strain on the lives of the Irish people but also our fragile environment that is left totally unprotected against rapacious capitalism.
The environmental movement in Ireland for too long has been passive. There needs to be a stronger response, a militant working class response. Without a mass movement to challenge imperialist parasites the people of Ireland will continue to suffer