Roger Fingas
The Irish High Court has tossed an appeal of a ruling in favor of Apple's Athenry data center, in theory removing the final legal obstacle towards the project's construction.
There were no grounds for an appeal, the court ruled on Wednesday according to Reuters. In mid-October, residents Allan Daly and Sinead Fitzpatrick requested a certificate, looking to once again challenge the data center on environmental issues.
Daly, an environmental engineer, has often been at the center of opposition and voiced concerns about things like greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for overloading the Irish power grid. Apple has dismissed any such worries.
The company originally announced plans for Irish and Danish data centers in Feb. 2015. While the Irish center was expected to be Apple's first in Europe, legal opposition has so far prevented construction from even starting. Instead the Danish center is already nearing completion.
Some other residents of Athenry have rallied around Apple, arguing that the data center will help raise the local economy despite creating relatively few full-time jobs.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
7 Comments
From the looks of the renderings, I see a lot of grounds maintenance type work during the growing season and probably road clearing work during the winter months. No, that's not the high-paid IT jobs governments really want to see (so they can collect income taxes) but from what I've read, I don't see it being a drain on the local economy either.
“Overload the Irish power grid”?
Is the Irish power grid fuelled by pedalling leprechauns?
What I don't understand about the argument is that with Apple having a data center there, it will improve the power grid. Apple will demand reliable power and fixes to the local grid including having enough local sustainable sources of power to run the facility. Don't forget about the security jobs, jobs for whatever sustainable power solutions are added, etc. It does add up.