Una Mullally: Fine Gael’s embrace of big tech is coming back to bite it

In February of 2011, during Fine Gael’s election campaign, party leader Enda Kenny was giving a press conference alongside Richard Bruton. The journalist Senan Molony picked up on Kenny’s upcoming trip to Intel and reference to cloud computing. Molony said he didn’t understand cloud computing and wondered if the then taoiseach-in-waiting could explain it. You could hear a titter ripple around the room. “It’s a wireless connection to store data and information which is very easily retrievable,” Kenny said, “and as a consequence enlightens people like you and me who don’t understand.” There was uproarious laughter in the room, and applause.

There are many reasons this incident has stuck with me. One is about the clarity of a journalist cutting through the jargon to ask the simple questions, and not being concerned about whether the simplicity of the question made them look smart or not. Another is the collective assumption in the room that Kenny probably didn’t know what cloud computing was, and was therefore about to be caught out. And another is how impressed those in the room were – as we can tell from the laughs and applause – that Kenny could offer even a rudimentary explanation, leapfrogging a potential “gotcha” moment. Our bar for politicians actually understanding the things they talk about is low, so when they rise to it, they are applauded, even by journalists.

Over the course of their decade in power, Fine Gael has internalised many of the characteristics of Big Tech

But there’s also a huge naivety to that time. Back in 2011, Big Tech companies were still seen as cool, shiny, desirable. An atmosphere of awe surrounded these magical entities, headed up by youthful male billionaires, something that was encapsulated by the megachurch-like environment of the Web Summit, which took place in the RDS that year. Being a “hub” for such companies was seen as the positioning of one’s nation as enlightened, forward-looking, innovative and progressive.

The jargon of the era was “big data”, a field of extracting information from data sets that were too large to be analysed by traditional means. Social media and increased internet use meant that massive amounts of data were being created, and there was business in using this, however nebulous the term “big data” actually was.

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Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil caused the housing crisis – they cannot fix it

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Over the course of their decade in power, Fine Gael has internalised many of the characteristics of Big Tech. This manifests in multiple ways, such as the superficiality of their messaging, and the construction of a veneer of progress. But it’s also acute when it comes to two things: their lack of self-awareness, and their inability to grasp the inevitable consequences of their actions. At the Fine Gael think-in last month, Simon Coveney told attendees that when he looks in the mirror, he does not recognise the image the media and his political opposition portrays – an almost Zuckerbergian statement. This belief that they’re the good guys, and their critics are just misguided, is the central tenet of a delusion that characterises their disconnection from the electorate.

Providing people with shelter, and keeping the lights on, are the absolute basics of running a country. What has gone so wrong that those basics are failing?

When you think everything you’re doing is right, and when you believe that those pointing out negative potential consequences are just being mean, or “ideological”, as opposed to simply following a thought through, then it becomes very hard to conceptualise how effect is linked to cause.

Now, and in the future, our energy crisis will be exacerbated by the proliferation of data centres. If you invite energy-hungry entities into a country, and don’t put any cap on their development, there will be serious pressure put on electricity demands. Cause and effect. Action and consequence.

In 2018, the government published a statement titled The Role of Data Centres in Ireland’s Enterprise Strategy. The enthusiasm with which it makes the case for data centres in Ireland is rather remarkable. If I worked in the data centre business, I’d be popping champagne corks after reading it. In the concluding statement, it declares: “The Government endorses, supports and promotes the appropriate and timely delivery of data centres across the regions. It reaffirms that it is Government policy and in the national interest that these developments are delivered in the most efficient and timely way possible, based on the best available knowledge and informed engagement on their impacts.”

Ireland, with all its fancy tech companies and its data centre boom, is now in a remarkable situation where the potential for blackouts this winter isn’t some extreme fringe prediction. That is where we’re at. Providing people with shelter, and keeping the lights on, are the absolute basics of running a country. What has gone so wrong that those basics are failing?

Time and time again – across housing policy most severely, and now with the data centre free-for-all – Fine Gael has failed to comprehend the consequences of its actions, and how certain decisions would lead to inevitable problems. This blindness is rooted in arrogance, misplaced self-belief, and an almost evangelical, huffy self-righteousness. At the time of Kenny’s basic lesson in cloud computing, the party’s slogan loomed large behind him, literally: Get Ireland Working. But as it transpired, it would have been more accurate for Fine Gael to borrow Facebook’s mantra: move fast and break things.