Data centres are important to Ireland’s future and the country could not be closed off to new facilities without repercussions, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Peter Burke has said, noting however that the sector must be developed sustainably.
Speaking on Newstalk, Mr Burke said the data centre sector needed certainty, warning that the facilities had been responsible for growth in the economy.
“Anyone that thinks that Ireland can close down the country to data centres and not have significant repercussions is not in the real world, essentially,” he said. “We are a very agile economy. We have grown so much because of the prevalence of data centres.”
There have been concerns raised about the number of data centres being developed in Ireland and the strain that they place on the national grid. That has led to difficulty in getting new connections to the grid for the centres, and a number of planning conditions have been imposed for new facilities around renewable energy.
However, the Minister appeared to be behind the development of new centres here. Mr Burke said such infrastructure was responsible for a significant amount of profit booked through Ireland, and noted that the technology underwrites the tech sector and the high-value jobs that it brings. He also highlighted the shift towards hybrid and agile work practices following the pandemic, which still remain in many companies despite a shift in some firms to get people to return to the office.
“We have the best broadband, we have the best services now in tech. That doesn’t come without being able to facilitate data centres, and they’re very important to Ireland’s value proposition into the future,” he said.
“I think we need to have them in a sustainable way and obviously we have to manage our power to do that. The CRU is adjudicating on a new large energy user policy, and it’s important that it does that, but there is a clear roadmap for new potential proposals for data centres in the future.”
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