Facebook Files Plans For Irish Data Centre

Facebook will open a new data centre in Ireland, becoming the latest tech giant to establish a data centre in the country alongside Google and Apple.

The data centre will be Facebook’s second in Europe, the other located in Sweden. Ireland is home to Facebook’s European headquarters, and a planning application for the County Meath data centre was filed on Monday.

Action Plan

The Irish minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, Richard Bruton, who has been speaking with Facebook, said: “We have specifically targeted data centres as part of our Action Plan for jobs – this is an area particularly well suited to our climate and infrastructure, and holds the capacity to bring much-needed jobs and investment to regions where jobs are not growing as quickly.”

The proposed location of the data centre, in Clonee, County Meath, will use local renewable energy supplies and fibre web connections.

Facebook said that if plans are approved, the data centre will help support thousands of high-skilled jobs in the region and millions of Euros in economic impact.

Rachel Peterson, Facebook, said: “Ireland has been a home for Facebook since 2007 and today’s planning application demonstrates our continued interest to invest in Ireland. We hope to build an innovative, environmentally friendly data centre that will help us continue to connect people in Ireland and around the world – while supporting local job creation and Ireland’s successful technology economy. We look forward to continuing our conversations with the Clonee community in coming weeks.”

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