*Senator Roisin Garvey. Photograph: Natasha Barton
CLARE’S GREEN Senator has said the Ennis Data Centre which was granted approval this week is not in line with government policy.
On Tuesday, An Bord Pleanála upheld the decision by Clare County Council to give the go-ahead to the €1.2bn data centre in Ennis.
Welcoming the decision, applicants, Art Data Centres Ltd confirmed that the project will create between 400- 450 permanent jobs when the data centre campus is fully operational with up to 1,200 jobs in construction.
Construction is to take six years and a company spokesperson has said they plan to commence construction “as soon as possible in 2024”. The planned Ennis data centre has been moving for six years through various stages including strategic site assessment, zoning and planning.
Senator Roisin Garvey (GP) told The Clare Echo, “This data centre will not get a grid connection in its current form. It would need to be substantially reduced and powered by renewables in order to get any power.
“If this data centre was to go ahead, it would use all the available electricity for Ennis for fifteen years, no new housing, no EV chargers no new jobs outside of the few involved in the DC. Nothing but carbon emissions. This isn’t in line with the government data centre policy”.
Inagh native Garvey said the data centre “will take years to get fully operational”. She said “the whole thing is madness, I don’t know why Clare County Council and Pat Dowling are out celebrating this”. She said the amount of jobs listed to be associated with the development are “a myth”. She said the Clare branch of the Greens are to consider launching a judicial review.
Inclusion of the plans of the Ennis Data Centre in the Ennis 2040 strategy prompted Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) to resign from the Board of the Ennis 2040 DAC. He said, “Since December 2018 when the Council proposed a variation to the County Development Plan for the site in question to zone it for data centre development I have made submissions expressing my concerns none of which have not been addressed in the zoning by the Council nor the recent planning permission approval by An Bord Pleanála for the Data Centre”.
Cllr Flynn added, “I requested zero emissions green energy to be used to power the centre to replace the 120MW Gas fossil fuel generation station proposed to being built at the edge of town site which will have very serious impacts on public health, air quality, climate change due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. In addition as a civil engineer I submitted that the road network particularly junction 13 on the M18 is not capable of dealing with expected HGVs construction traffic, increased risk of downstream flooding in the Roslevan area due to runoff from the site, existing lack of capacity in existing water and wastewater infrastructure in Ennis to service the data centre. I was one of only twelve individual submissions to the original December 2018 Clare County Council zoning proposal, other than five from prescribed bodies/state agencies. In that submission and subsequent ones lodged to the planning authority and An Bord Pleanála I outlined those public, climate change and environmental risks and concerns. The conditions included in the 18 page An Bord Pleanála does not address sufficiently those concerns”.
Bridget Ginnity (GP) who is running as a local election candidate in the Ennis Municipal District said she was “shocked” with An Bord Pleanála granting permission. “Clare Green Party and several others made detailed submissions highlighting the significant climate impact, about 100,000 times the emissions of a typical person and yet the board decision referred to climate only twice. Once was to say they had regard to Climate Action Plan 2023 but there is no evidence that they did. The second time was to say that the future switch to sustainable or renewable gas supplies will have a corresponding reduction in carbon emissions. At present we have well below 1% renewable gas and there is no realistic pathway to a significant increase. It’s like building houses now and saying the sewage treatment plant will be operational by 2050”.
Concerns on grid capacity were also made by the Clare Green Party “as it consumes about two and a half times the electricity used by all of Clare. Yet there was no mention of this in the decision. The data centre needs almost ten percent of town water supply during dry spells use and such like. Again, no reference to this. Their decision referred to things like construction noise and dust and other relatively trivial issues. It concludes that there is a potentially positive environmental impact from putting the existing overhead transmission cables underground. A statement like this about a project generating one percent of national emissions makes a mockery of the planning process”.
Ginnity added, “It’s important to remember that this project came about as part of the Ennis 2040 Strategy, where this was identified as a transformational project. I don’t think the Council intended to transform us into a major climate black spot, but that is what will happen. Why did the council not listen to reasonable, scientifically strong submissions but continued to pursue this monstrous project”.
