Ronan Kelly was appointed CEO of the lobby group earlier this year. Digital Infrastructure Ireland
Data Centres
Digital Infrastructure Ireland wants more data centres built in Ireland.
THE HEAD OF Ireland’s data centre lobby has claimed the sector is falling victim to “conspiracy theories” and “disinformation” originating in American politics.
Ronan Kelly said that he agrees with US president Donald Trump’s recent claims that fears around AI are a “hoax”, with Kelly adding that “state actors like China” are “fuelling huge disinformation” in the US.
This sentiment, Kelly claimed, has spread “over the past 3-4 months” to communities in Ireland.
Digital Infrastructure Ireland is partnered with a number of data centre firms, and says it lobbies to promote Ireland as the best location to host data. It also wants to expand digital infrastructure here so as to host more data centres, having previously lobbied members of the Cabinet about the connections policy for data centres to the electricity grid.
Speaking to The Journal, the chief executive of Digital Infrastructure Ireland likened local opponents of data centres in their communities to Brexiteers. He said they will cause economic damage to Ireland in the longer run.
Kelly said he feels that where people may be “celebrating and they’re all high-fiving each other” over successfully stopping a data centre, it is “very analogous to me of the scenes in the UK of people on the streets when they secured the Brexit vote”.
“Ten years later, we don’t see them celebrating anymore.”
The debate around data centres has intensified this year, after the Irish government lifted a moratorium on data centre expansion last January. Developers have faced consistent planning challenges, as data centres in Co Mayo and Co Waterford have both been rejected by officials following opposition.
Kelly claimed that the uptick in opposition to his industry has come on foot of similar pushback in the US against the sector, where it is quickly becoming a bipartisan issue among Republicans and Democrats.
“I cringe every time the US president chimes in on these discussions, but ignoring that I do agree that state actors are getting in on fuelling these discussions and there is a huge amount of disinformation,” Kelly said.
He claimed that “funding is coming from China” to back anti-data centre opposition in the US to “influence and inflate the concerns” concerning the sector.
Referring to Ireland, Kelly said he believes there is “no question” that this has affected the “story of the Irish data centre sector” on this side of the Atlantic.
Data centres “were not in the public psyche up until about three or four months ago”, Kelly said of the debate around data centres in Ireland.
“But again, that timing ties in exactly with when we started to see the increase in activity against data centres in the US.”
Over recent years, debate concerning data centre public debate has featured prominently at Oireachtas committee hearing and in Dáil debates, while some 300 people had already objected to a data centre planned for Kilmeaden, Co Waterford at this time last year.
Before that, in January 2022, EirGrid introduced a de facto ban on new data centre connections in Dublin due to constraints.
Sector has been too ‘secretive’
In July, Kelly was appointed CEO of Digital Infrastructure Ireland, having previously been managing director of UK telecom company Allpoints Fibre Networks.
He said that the data centre sector has been overly “secretive” in the past, and that his organisation is now “working on materials to help better educate at the community level”, following growing backlash to the expansion of the energy-hungry facilities.
“There wasn’t enough response before but we are responding now,” he said.
Kelly said the group wants to ensure that an “investment wave” based around AI can be catered to as soon as possible by building more data centres in Ireland and expanding the energy grid.
“It won’t wait for us. As soon as water encounters an obstacle, it will flow into another direction; the AI industry is the water and Ireland’s grid is the obstacle,” Kelly said.
“It just moves to the next country, because the investors have the barrel of the gun pointed at all the CEOs and are saying, ‘Just get it built’, and they’ll go to another country soon enough if they can’t do it here.”
Kelly added that there are “two data centre sectors in Ireland”, as he placed large facilities used by tech giants such as Meta, in Co Meath, on a different standing to many other facilities.
“The majority of these facilities are important for our economy, while I think you could argue that the others are facilities are mainly responsible for social media and which it wouldn’t be a big deal if we didn’t have in the long run,” Kelly said.
He added that the Meta facility is one of only a handful of Ireland’s data centres that don’t use a ‘closed loop’ system to regulate their water use.
“The 107 others use closed loop and aren’t intensive water users,” Kelly said.
A report by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) this week found that data centres were the “dominant driver” of increased energy demand in the commercial services sector.
Its projections suggests energy demand could rise by 10% by 2030, against a required reduction of 15%.