Mayo Green Party back Killala data centre opposed by Sally Rooney

THE Mayo Green Party have backed a data centre that has been opposed by best-selling author Sally Rooney. 

Ms Rooney, author of the popular novel ‘Normal People’, is among those opposed to a proposed data centre at the former Asahi synthetic fibre plant in Killala. 

Mayo Data Hub Limited have applied for planning permission for a 29,076 square metre single-storey data centre a Mullafarry and Tawnaghmore Upper, Killala. The application includes provision for include provision for 56 car parking spaces, including 12 electric vehicle (EV) charging spaces, 20 cycle parking spaces as well as footpaths and cyclists’ infrastructure. 

In a submission against the development, Ms Rooney voiced concerns over the carbon emissions from such a centre, describing it as a ‘wasteful, unnecessary and environmentally toxic proposal’. The Castlebar native also said the additional demand on the electricity grid would increase the risk of blackouts. 

In a statement, the Mayo Green Party welcomed Mayo County Council’s request for further information on the proposal from Mayo Data Hub. 

The party said the data centre would be appropriate for the area if powered by 100 per cent locally generated wind energy. 

North Mayo has a number of wind farms, including the Killala Community Windfarm. 

Mayo Green Party chairperson Micheál ‘Boxty’ Ó Conaill said that data centres were important to Ireland’s digital and economic future and that it was ‘too simplistic just to dismiss them out of hand’.

Mr O’Conaill said that if a data centre in Killala was to employ 20 people, it would be equivalent to 20,000 jobs in Dublin.

“Data centres support a wide range of applications. They let us make phone calls. They include cloud services, which most of us use every day. They support financial services, healthcare, education services, or in the case with Storm Eowyn just a few weeks ago, real-time information on weather, maps for electricity and water faults, or eircodes to allow emergency services to get to where they need to go fast.  The claim that data centres exist primarily for online advertising is an oversimplification,” said Mr O’Conaill, who ran in last year’s local and general elections. 

“North Mayo is a relatively unconstrained grid area. We have lots of wind power here and when the wind is blowing, a lot of that power is dumped at night because there’s no demand. Instead, this curtailed energy could be used and stored by the data centre. In addition, excess heat from the data centre could be used to provide low-carbon district heating and hot water to Killala Town.” 

The Erris native said that the new policy direction on data centres proposed by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) this week seemed to strengthen the case for the location of data centres outside of urban and constrained areas, and close to energy sources.

“The CRU issued new draft policy that will require data centres to make public their carbon emissions and use of renewables. It also details new policies for connecting data centres to the national grid,” Mr O’Conaill explained.

“At the moment, new centres are mandated to provide generation or storage to match the amount of energy they use. In a change to this, the generation or storage can be near the new centre, and not just onsite. In addition, Eirgrid and ESB Networks must consider the location of any new data centres and take into account if they are in a ‘constrained’ region.”