Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan has accused the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) of putting the interests of big businesses ahead of hard-pressed households with their draft PR6 plan.
The Dublin MEP said:
“It is completely unjustifiable that this plan will hit households and small businesses with higher electricity charges, while data centres are given discount rates.
“Charges for families and businesses would increase up to 21%, while the big data centres draining energy from our grid would see costs fall as much as 18%.
“This move is indefensible.
“The CRU’s own documents show that these data centres and the demand they create are a major factor in the need to overhaul our energy grid.
“Ordinary people should not be subsidising the profits of the very companies who drive up the prices of energy here.
“The CRU’s justification is disingenuous. The CRU claim that data centres were paying a bit more for the last five years, but that conveniently ignores over a decade of subsidies where households were forced to carry the load for data centres through the secretive LEU Rebalancing Subvention.
“The CRU will dress this up as a complicated technical decision but at the end of the day this is a political choice to side with big tech’s data centres over households.
“Rather than giving priority to big corporations, the government should challenge this CRU decision and ensure that a fairer plan for energy charges is agreed for 2026-2030.”
