"In the winter it was so cold inside my gaff that I could almost see my breath"

We're sharing here the transcript of the speech given by Eoghan Connolly at our 'Energy for Who?' protest outside the Dáil on September 30th. Eoghan is a youth climate activist and tenant, who is passionate about the intersection of class, the housing crisis, and climate justice. 

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I grew up in Andrews Court Flats around the corner.  And in the winter, it was so cold inside that you could almost see your breath. And still, we couldn’t afford to always turn on the heating. My ma raised us by herself, and we hadn’t got much income. Instead, we often layered on jumper after jumper, to stay warm. Mould was a frequent issue, eating away at the walls and making the home unsafe.

And my experience isn’t unique. It’s the reality, for working-class, marginalised communities across Ireland—families stuck in freezing homes that desperately need retrofitting. That’s why we’re here today! Because energy injustice is only getting worse. Right now, Ireland has some of the highest energy prices in Europe. This year, prices are going up even more. And at the very same time, the Government is taking away energy credits from those who need them most.

And what’s massively impacting this energy crisis? Data centres. These power banks for Big Tech are devouring our energy supply. They use more electricity than every urban home in Ireland combined. In the Dublin-Meath region, they take nearly half of the grid — 48 percent. Compare that to the EU average of just 2 percent.

And while these ultra-rich tech corporations gorge themselves on cheap power — ordinary people are drowning in debt. 300,000 households are already in energy arrears. And yet, some scenarios are seeing energy prices for data centers going down by as much as 18 percent. Discounts for corporations. Debt for people.

And it doesn’t stop there. Data centres are wrecking our environment. Millions of litres of water wasted every day. Huge amounts of carbon pumped into the air. And for what? To store advertising that makes us buy things we don’t need. Or worse—to store surveillance data of Palestinians in the middle of a genocide.

So what do we demand? We demand the government stop putting corporations before people, and before the planet. We demand green affordable energy and retrofitting for households, not discounts for billionaires. And we demand a moratorium on data centres — now!

This fight is bigger than just data centres. It’s about energy justice. It’s about reclaiming who gets to decide how we use our land, our water, and our energy. We have the power to pressure our government. It’s possible to have an energy and housing transition that puts people and the climate before the profits of the few.