Facebook To Build New €200m Irish Data Centre

Exciting news in both the tech & employment sectors emerged over the weekend as the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social networking giant is ready and set to build its sixth data centre in Ireland.

The new 227-acre site will be based in Clonee, Co. Meath which sits just 10 miles outside of Dublin and will be one of the most advanced, sustainable & energy-efficient data centres in the world.

The facility – which will cost around €200m to build – will rely solely on renewable wind energy much like Facebook’s first European data centre which opened in Luella, Sweden back in 2013. There are also four other data centres located in the United States.

There will be an initial 31,000 sq.m facility built on the site with planning permission from Meath County Council & An Bord Pleanála already granted for a second building. As the centre will be cooled with 100% outdoor air, a special cooling process will be applied to filter out any salt that may be in the air due to Clonee’s proximity to the Irish sea.

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The news will come as a huge boost to the local economy and the country as a whole as there are set to be over 2,000 temporary construction jobs created during the building of the centre with many permanent positions set to be created also.

The Swedish facility currently employs over 150 people and it’s expected that the operational staff numbers in the Irish facility will be roughly the same. The success of the Luella data centre has resulted in the town becoming a mini-tech hub and it is hoped that the Clonee facility will have a similar impact.

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Work on the new facility is expected to begin soon and operations are expected to begin by 2018 at the latest. Facebook initially submitted plans for the facility last year and planning permission was granted in July. Ireland has been the international HQ for Facebook since 2009 and Mark Zuckerberg posted the below message on his own Facebook page.