Taoiseach Micheál Martin was quick to say he will “delve into” the circumstances of Amazon scrapping plans for a big industrial plant in Dublin. The tech behemoth cancelled the €300 million project because it could not secure a power supply on time.
Finding out what happened should be no more difficult than arranging a phone call between the Taoiseach and Terence O’Rourke, chairman of the State-owned ESB since 2020. Martin might also make enquiries of Amazon, one of the biggest and most valued client companies of IDA Ireland, the inward investment agency.
The prospect of 500 new jobs was lost when Amazon’s cloud-computing arm, AWS, abandoned plans to build high-tech server racks at Ballycoolin. Such racks are a form of specialist shelving used in data centres to drive AI technology, a priority area for foreign direct investment strategists.
The loss of this individual project is bad enough, the reputational damage worse still. Whatever way you cut it, the signal has gone out in a very public way that the electricity network in certain parts of Dublin can’t meet new industrial demand. This is on top of housing delivery being hampered by serious constraints in power and water networks.
No surprise, then, that the Government is redoubling efforts to spur infrastructure investment. Given rapid population and employment growth, the need is obvious. But a report from Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers highlights how it can take seven years to develop electricity substations and a decade to build a small water treatment plant.
This is extraordinary, although it hardly comes as news to the electricity, water or transport sectors. Nor indeed to people waiting for utility suppliers to deliver the goods.
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The ESB has one job: to supply power to customers. Surging demand and consequent network pressures have been apparent for years, already prompting special measures to curtail new data centres. Still, AWS electricity demand at Ballycoolin would be nowhere near data-centre levels.
This prompts obvious questions for Martin: Why was the ESB unable meet such demand? And what will it do to avoid any repeat of the situation?
