Amazon Data Centre at Dublin

Amazon, the dominant cloud-service business has been given the green light to establish the state-of-the-art data centre in Dublin. The granted blueprint for the data centre set to be built in Tallaght will sit on an 88,000 square feet. However, not everyone is happy about the project. A local community group that had initially embraced the project has pointed out that building the facility at Tallaght is over-contracting the data centres in one particular area. The new data centre will be located in an area formally occupied by warehousing and distribution firm Barretts. The main concern raised by the Tallaght Community Council based on what they told the South Dublin Council is that the latest application to build the data centre at the former site of Barretts had not taken into consideration proper planning of the entire area. Last year the group stated through their chair, Gerald Stockhil that they weren’t opposed to the project but the fact that all other developments are located at one particular location as annex of the super-site was a major concern. The Tallaght Community Council was of the opinion that spreading development projects across Tallaght would have more socioeconomic impact compared to concentrating all projects in one particular spot.

Mr Stockhil further stated that raising concern at this stage was prudent as it will keep in check the possibility of over-concentrating development plans in one area in future. As if that is not enough, he was quick to point out that the data centres offer few employment opportunities to the locals. The group felt that further decision to allocate development lands to any development project should be made taking into consideration the future impact a project would have in regards to the overall livelihood of local Dublin businesses and the greater Dublin community. He stated that Tallaght would stand to benefit more if industrial development that employ many people is given a priority in future compared to giving prime land to low-employment operations. It is interpreted that the Tallaght Community felt that by allocating prime land to industrial developments that would employ many people is a great strategy to spread well the resources in Dublin to as many people as possible. This is contrary to allocating the prime land to low employing developments such as Amazon that would only benefit few people. This follows an application for a planning permission filed by amazon in the course of last year for the initial stage of a £1bn data centre hub destined to be located in Malhuddart, Dublin, dubbed project G. The initial project that had been submitted by Amazon for the data centre had been projected to cost £200m as well as cover 223,000 sq. ft. But under a modified plan dubbed "Project G", Amazon hinted that it might build additional projects to a maximum of seven data centres at the same location that is owned by the IDA. Such trends of over-concentrating development project at one particular project would have an overall negative impact as many people who would have benefitted but cannot access the area will be locked out.