Data centres now use almost a quarter of Ireland's electricity. Governments should put that to Ireland at its UN review.

Data centres now use almost a quarter of Ireland's electricity, nearly as much as every home in the country combined.^1,2 Yet in February 2026, Microsoft refused to let the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño, visit its data centre in Dublin during her official visit to Ireland.³

As Ireland's human rights record comes before the United Nations on 10 November, Foundation for Gaia today called on governments to make data centres part of that review.⁴

Ireland is thought to have the highest share of electricity going to data centres of any country in the world.⁵ In 2025, data centres used 23 per cent of all electricity consumed in Ireland,⁶ almost as much as every home in the country's electricity use combined, which accounts for 28 per cent.⁷

In June 2026, a United Nations University study described Ireland's experience as a cautionary tale for the rest of the world.⁸ Experts have also warned that continued data centre growth threatens Ireland's legally binding carbon budgets.⁹

After years of restrictions on new grid connections in the Dublin area, the government adopted an updated plan in January 2026 to allow large data centres to connect to the grid if they provide their own onsite power generation or storage.¹⁰ On 7 September 2026, Ireland's energy regulator went further, proposing that new data centres could have their gas supply interrupted during periods of extreme demand, to protect supplies to households and small businesses this winter.¹¹

Ireland is an early warning of a global trend. Global data centres used around 415 terawatt hours of electricity in 2024, about 1.5 per cent of all the electricity generated worldwide.¹² That rose by 17 per cent in 2025 alone, and the International Energy Agency expects demand to more than double between 2024 and 2030.^13,14

By mid 2026, more than fifty cities and counties in the United States had banned or paused new data centres.¹⁵ National human rights bodies in South Africa and Australia have begun examining the human rights impacts of data centres, and the Australian Human Rights Commission has warned that its government's AI plan does not do enough to address them.¹⁶ Foundation for Gaia's research shows that in many countries, data centres are being approved before the public is told how much water and energy they will use and before strict, binding regulations are in place for monitoring.¹⁷

UN experts rely on access to see for themselves how rights are affected on the ground. When a company can close its doors to a UN expert on an official visit, it raises questions about how much the public and the government can know about an industry that uses nearly a quarter of the nation's electricity.

Why the UN review matters

The Universal Periodic Review is the only UN process in which every country's human rights record is examined by its peers, roughly every four and a half years.²¹ Governments taking part can put questions to Ireland in advance and make recommendations during the review.

Foundation for Gaia's July 2026 report, The Ground Beneath the Cloud, found that no Human Rights Council resolution, Special Rapporteur report or treaty body finding has yet dealt specifically with the environmental footprint of data centres.²² Ireland's review gives governments a chance to put the issue on the record at the Human Rights Council.