The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications has said Eirgrid is ''absolutely right'' not to take new applications from data centres over concerns about the energy supply.

''We haven't taken a new application for a new data centre going back almost two years to July 2020,'' Eamon Ryan said on his way into the Cabinet meeting this morning.

Minister Ryan said that Ireland is currently in a ''very tight situation'' regarding electricity supply.

His comments follow a report in The Irish Times that Eirgrid, which operates the country's electricity network, has halted talks with data centre promoters due to restrictions on the sector to ease pressure on power supplies.

''Eirgrid has our full support in what they are doing,'' Minister Ryan said.

He said data centres will be a part of the future but they will operate within Ireland's climate and energy supply limits and will have to bring their own generation and be flexible in how they use demand.

''We don't want to say no but there is no point saying yes when there isn't the power supply in the grid to manage data centres'' Eamon Ryan told RTÉ News.

Meanwhile, EirGrid has said that it was considering applications for a grid connection offer from just under 30 data centre projects at the time of the publication of the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities' (CRU) in November 2021.

It said that under the CRU Direction, EirGrid must consider certain criteria when deciding to make a grid connection offer.

EirGrid said it is applying that criteria to all data centre applications and in doing so, the majority of the applications referenced "have been, or are in the process of being, closed out in line with the CRU Direction".