Regulation AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-24

Ireland has outlawed nuclear power since 1999. Data centres now take 23 percent of its electricity, and the Taoiseach says he is open to it.

The Financial Times reported on 24 August that Ireland is reconsidering its statutory ban on nuclear generation as electricity demand from data centres climbs. Taoiseach Micheál Martin, speaking at a business dinner, said Ireland is “open to that”. The ban dates from the Electricity Regulation Act 1999 and has stood for nearly thirty years; in May, Fianna Fáil TD James O'Connor introduced legislation that would lift it and allow a formal evaluation. The pressure behind the rethink is measurable. More than 80 data centres operate in Ireland, and they consumed 23 percent of the country's total metered electricity in 2025, a rise of 518 percent since 2015. EirGrid has forecast the share could reach 25 percent by 2030. Nothing has been repealed, there is no government bill, and there has been no political will to revisit the ban until now. What has changed is what ministers are willing to say out loud.

Why it mattersIreland is the test case everyone else is a few years behind on. It attracted data centres with tax policy and an English-speaking workforce, then discovered that nearly a quarter of its grid was going to buildings with no people in them — and it got there on ordinary cloud demand, before the AI build-out even started. Now the country that wrote a nuclear ban into law is talking about unwriting it, because the arithmetic of a grid that must be both low-carbon and always-on does not otherwise close. If you want to know what AI electricity demand does to a national energy policy, this is not a forecast. It is the country that arrived first.

✓ Verified · 4 sources

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Ireland has outlawed nuclear power since 1999. Data centres now take 23 percent of its electricity, and the Taoiseach says he is open to it.

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