Plans to be lodged for €1.2bn data centre campus in Clare

PLANS are to be lodged in the coming days for a new €1.2 billion 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, writes Gordon Deegan.
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 1.3 million sq ft.
The site is located on the Tulla Road 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. It will have access to 200 mega-watts 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 & power generating infrastructure’.
Tom McNamara of the 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 & 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.”
He further stated: “Additionally, more dispersed data centre developments like this 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 over viewing 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.