Mike Wuerthele
The Irish courts continue to defer the Athenry, Ireland data center decision, and are next scheduled to hear the case in October.
The latest postponement forced the ruling on the matter to be postponed to July 28, reported The Irish Times on Wednesday. It is not clear why the matter has been delayed again, with the next possible court date scheduled for October 12.
Apple unveiled plans to build in Denmark and Athenry on the same day in February 2016. The project in Viborg, Denmark is very near completion, and the first of two Irish data center projects for Apple has not even exited the planning phase.
The spearhead behind the resistance to the Athenry data center is Allan Daly. Daly is an American-born immigrant and environmental engineer, and has raised multiple objections to the data center. Daly's concerns center around strain on the Irish electrical grid and no apparent plans to cope with greenhouse gas emissions from the data center.
Apple's project was initially approved by Irish planning councils, but Daly and fellow residents Sinead Fitzpatrick and Brian McDonagh appealed the decision to Ireland's An Bord Pleanala in Sept. 2015. The appeal wasn't granted, forcing Daly to the High Court for review of the case.
The last hearing in June was postponed over "a lack of judges" available to hear the case. The manpower shortage wasn't that transparent, until a six-person delegation from the "Apple for Athenry" advocacy group arrived and found it closed.
Apple's effort isn't the only one in Daly's cross-hairs. Daly is also fighting a $1 billion Amazon data center in Dublin.
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5 Comments
no doubt why Western is in decline. In that time frame, China would have built the data center already.
IMHO it's increasingly likely that data center will never EVER be built. Didn't Apple very recently say they'd be building a second Danish data center to go along with the already completed one? My guess is that's going to end up as a sub for the once-planned Irish center until they can make other arrangements to build someplace else.
Agree. Don't understand why they don't want that datacenter.
Wow, pathetic. “Greenhouse gas emissions” and “strain on the electrical grid”? This will probably be one of the greenest buildings in the country.
Not sure why this guy would be fighting a leading global tech company from helping their economy for reasons such as those cited. Doesn't Apple have a policy to try run all its operations on renewable energy, which Apple may even fund itself? Quite short sighted I must say.