Plans to be lodged for €1.2bn data centre in Ennis

Plans are to be lodged in the coming days for a new €1.2bn data centre campus on the outskirts of Ennis which will create 250 data centre jobs and 1,200 jobs during the project's construction phase.

Plans are to be lodged in the coming days for a new €1.2bn data centre campus on the outskirts of Ennis which will create 250 data centre jobs and 1,200 jobs during the project's construction phase.

The new Ennis data centre campus, identified by Clare County Council as a key pillar of the Ennis 2040 Economic Plan for the area, will comprise a vertical farm and six data halls designed on a flexible and modular basis, covering 145 acres or 1.3m sq ft.

The site is located on the Tulla Rd on the eastern outskirts of Ennis at Junction 13 on the M18 motorway connecting Galway to Limerick.

Art Data Centres has been working on the project since 2018 and construction of the art data centre campus will be phased over a six-year period commencing in late 2022.

The scheme has been designed by data centre specialists Colin Hyde of ARC:MC, and Robert Thorogood of Hdrinc.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB

It will have access to 200 megawatts of power from both the network grid and gas generation on site.

The proposed site was zoned in 2019 by members of Clare County Council for ‘data centres and power generating infrastructure’.

Tom McNamara of development managers Tom McNamara & Partners, said: “Development of this data centre campus has been specifically identified as a transformational site by Clare County Council in its Draft Ennis 2040 Economic and Spatial Plan and is in accordance with the Government’s role for data centres in Ireland’s Enterprise Strategy.

Mr McNamara stated: "With Eirgird increasingly focused on data centres locating away from Dublin and the east coast to reduce pressure on existing grid infrastructure in those areas, projects like this can avail of underused grid capacity in other regions and tap into the growing number of renewable energy developments in the west and south of the country that offer clean sources of power."

Mr McNamara said there was a need for more dispersed data centre developments, such as the proposed Ennis one, to help diversify economic growth and job creation to regions outside of Dublin. 

"Over many years, Ennis, as the largest town in Munster, has been striving to lay the foundations for inward investment and has been successfully building connectivity as part of becoming an 'information age town' and because of its access to power, fibre and location close to Shannon international airport, it is a natural home for this project.” 

The submission of the Art Data Centre planning application follows an online public consultation run by Tom McNamara & Partners which involved an interactive panel room overviewing all the pertinent information on the project. 

This was set up to mitigate against the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions which precluded an in-person consultation