Ireland weighs lifting 1999 nuclear ban as data centres hit 23%

Ireland's parliament is preparing to debate lifting a 1999 prohibition on nuclear-fission electricity generation, in a policy reversal driven in large part by the country's ballooning data-centre load. According to the Financial Times, Taoiseach Micheál Martin told a recent business dinner that Ireland is "open to that [nuclear]," a marked shift from an official line the previous summer that had called nuclear "not on the table."

Fianna Fáil TD James O'Connor has introduced the Electricity Regulation (Removal of Nuclear Fission Prohibitions) Bill 2026, which would repeal Section 18(6) of the 1999 Electricity Regulation Act and a matching provision in the Planning and Development Act 2024. O'Connor pitches the move as "a once in a generation" reset toward "energy sovereignty," arguing domestic power demand will rise 45% over eight years.

The pressure is coming disproportionately from hyperscale computing. Ireland's data centres consumed 23% of the country's total metered electricity in 2025, up 518% since 2015, with more than 80 facilities now on the grid, Data Center Dynamics reported. That load is close to what all Irish households consume combined, and the story lands in a summer already full of grid-squeeze reporting on our infrastructure desk. It follows our coverage last week of Big Tech opening data-center doors as $130B in AI projects stall against similar interconnection limits.

Nuclear's skeptics push back mostly on timelines. Hannah Daly, a sustainable energy professor at University College Cork, told the FT that "Nuclear is certainly not something that can address any of those challenges in the next 15 to 20 years." Green Party leader Roderic O'Gorman calls the technology "slow and expensive to implement." A Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland study covering both small modular reactors and conventional plants is due to feed a white paper by end of 2027.