‘Unreasonable’ for Apple decision at this stage

The chief of the IDA has said it was still up to Apple whether or not to build its much delayed €850m data centre at Athenry, and it was “unreasonable” for the tech giant to commit at this stage before planning appeals have been exhausted.

The chief of the IDA has said it was still up to Apple whether or not to build its much delayed €850m data centre at Athenry, and it was “unreasonable” for the tech giant to commit at this stage before planning appeals have been exhausted.

Martin Shanahan also said data centres could provide significant levels of employment in rural areas and be a catalyst to provide many more jobs if multinationals base global engineering hubs and designate their Irish bases as the main European centres to comply with new EU rules on data protection — regulations which come into force later this year.