Apple pulls out of data center in Athenry due to fcuked up planning and gob****es

wexie

ChikiChiki wrote: »

This is very very true. It will definitely reduce potential future opportunities due to nimbyism. The economy of the local are would have greatly benefited.

Yes

(aside from the fact that it's Danes living in Denmark, not really sure where the Dutch come in to be honest )

Hurrache

cnocbui wrote: »

Well could explain the location of existing data centres in Ireland that were not located in the middle of nowhere then?

Facebook in Clonee. Amazon's which will be in Dublin 15. Not sure of the Athenry site but Facebook's is right on the outskirts of what's a big urban area now, and Amazon's will be right in the middle of some suburbs.

I'm not quite sure what the point being made is though about the Athenry site and existing data centres not located in the middle of nowhere?

Fann Linn

wexie wrote: »

Yes

(aside from the fact that it's Danes living in Denmark, not really sure where the Dutch come in to be honest )

Probably to do with the Double Dutch tax fiddle

LFC Murphy

BPKS wrote: »

The supporters of the project in Athenry should picket the house of the guy in Wicklow for a few weeks and object to any planning permissions he or his family make for the rest of their lives.

Or boycott the Solicitors practice??

ebbsy

Yillan wrote: »

Would they? Where does it say that? According to anything I read, Apple were going to use renewable energy, but had made no commitment to creating any renewable energy, which would just mean paying Airtricity etc for their wind farm electricity, and then the rest of us are back on the fossil fuels.

I think I read that the servers would add an extra 4% energy burden to Ireland, which would put strain on a supply which is just barely ticking along as it is.

And the idea of 150 permanent jobs is apparently a bit of a fantasy designed to dress up the project so people can argue it would be good for the local economy. So you have a paltry number of additional jobs, a huge drain on the energy supply for the country and Apple building a huge centre in the middle of nowhere but god help anyone that even suggests it mightn't be as good as it is presented to be.

A new McDonalds opening would be better for the local and national economy than this 500 million euro project.

And where are people going to get the money from to spend in McDonalds, shops, and other services ?

Will other companies looking at this go, ah **** it lets move to Denmark ?

Oh yes, they already are.

savemejebus

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2018/0510/961460-apple-athenry/

There you have it folks.

The result of a couple of locals and a fcuking eejit in Co Wicklow.

Not surprised. Total pisstake.

I'm sorry for the people of Athenry. You could of done with it. Good things don't come your way due to lunatics and a ****ed up planning process.

That's not quite fair, there is only one local. The other one is from Pennsylvania, a blow-in

cnocbui

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

The government really face an uphill battle with idiots in this country.

That battle begins when they get up in the morning and look in the mirror. They are the one's at fault for not addressing the problems with Ireland's stupid legal and planning systems

YFlyer

major bill wrote: »

So yer man buys land for 22 million in Wicklow, plans to ''develop the worlds biggest data centre'' gets rejected for planning permission and as a result tried his best to block this move in a part of Ireland he has no connection to cos he feels Wicklow would be a better spot.

What a ****ing ****!!!

Sometimes the greed in this country frustrates me.

He should work with Apple. What IT experience he got?

Hurrache

cnocbui wrote: »

I am happy to provide that which you do not want to see.

That's just a quote from a member of a residents association. It might as well be made up without showing where he got his number from.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

This is why companies will not, in the main, relocate outside of the major cities, especially Dublin. My particular area is parma, and the race to be first to market is absolutely critical for new products. If I was making strategic decisions about where to build a new plant now, I would choose somewhere in cork or Dublin where I won't get held up for three years before I can even break ground. Thus compounding the housing crisis, and making the urban infrastructure ever more over loaded.

The more I look at it the more I'm convinced that all of our problems, or at least a lot of the housing, congestion problems, are directly related to our woeful planning laws. This is something the government could fix overnight, but seem to choose not to. This doesn't seem to benefit anyone but there has to be a reason that nothing is being done.

Turbohymac

Regardless of amount of jobs being offered. Until our government and revenue start actually taxing these large companies properly. While they actually do create jobs it is actually robbing all the other taxpaying residents here & starving much needed revenue for much upgrades to our basic infrastructure.

zom

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

The government really face an uphill battle with idiots in this country.

Our lovely new and shiny Taoiseach Leo is famous for objecting construction of Lidl in his poshy Castlenock:

https://cdn.radiocms.net/000/images/000260/268009_60_news_hub_multi_630x0.JPG

Billy86

I'll be honest that I assumed it was NIMBYism before reading up on it a bit more, and now I would prefer if it was NIMBYism. Absolutely disgraceful carry on, and I hope those that blocked it get all the negative press possible to the point of doing them more bad than good.

knipex

marno21 wrote: »

Almost every project/development in Ireland is seeing these kind of NIMBY objections as if these projects were benefit-less wastes of money that are solely being built to interfere with the lives of local residents and destroy the environment

Hopefully this will generate enough negative publicity to kickstart planning reform. It has to happen as the country is being held up beyond belief by this issue.

This wasn't NIMBYism in the normal sense. My understanding is that most of the objectors didn't live in the area.

IMHO we do need to take a serious look at out current all out embracement of data center development. They put huge demands on power but from what I can see provide very little employment or long term benefit to the country, especially considering the potential impact on out power grid.

cnocbui

Hurrache wrote: »

Facebook in Clonee. Amazon's which will be in Dublin 15. Not sure of the Athenry site but Facebook's is right on the outskirts of what's a big urban area now, and Amazon's will be right in the middle of some suburbs.

I'm not quite sure what the point being made is though about the Athenry site and existing data centres not located in the middle of nowhere?

My point is that Apple were stupid to pick such a site, given Ireland's planning system.

I am not happy the project was cancelled and what has happened is a shame on this country, but Apple are not blameless.

Alun

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

This is why companies will not, in the main, relocate outside of the major cities, especially Dublin. My particular area is parma, and the race to be first to market is absolutely critical for new products.

To be fair, the Italian ham market is a cuthroat one for sure.

Hurrache

zom wrote: »

Our lovely new and shiny Taoiseach Leo is famous for objecting construction of Lidl in his poshy Castlenock:

https://cdn.radiocms.net/000/images/000260/268009_60_news_hub_multi_630x0.JPG

If you knew that site, and the massive traffic and parking problems already in that small area, you'd understand why.

Hurrache

cnocbui wrote: »

My point is that Apple were stupid to pick such a site, given Ireland's planning system.

I am not happy the project was cancelled and what has happened is a shame on this country, but Apple are not blameless.

Was the land zoned industrial or commercial? Personally I don't see the issue with it, especially given the 2 examples I already provided.

wexie

cnocbui wrote: »

My point is that Apple were stupid to pick such a site, given Ireland's planning system.

I am not happy the project was cancelled and what has happened is a shame on this country, but Apple are not blameless.

I think it's absolutely disgraceful that this was allowed to happen.

But I'd have to agree with you at least a little bit that it doesn't seem like to most logical spot to build a flagship data center.

Having said that I haven't seen much of the reasoning behind picking that location.

weldoninhio

cnocbui wrote: »

I am happy to provide that which you do not want to see.



https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/apple-athenry-centre-will-need-more-than-dublins-daily-electricity-supply-hearing-34744102.html

Oisin Collins, representing a residents group, said Apple would be the largest private user of electricity in the State, if it were to expand its presence to the predicted level over the next 15 years.

It would use 300MW of power, which is 8pc of the national capacity and more than the daily entire usage of Dublin city. He questioned whether the impact on the national grid had been fully assessed.

So if was to build a further 7 data centres in the future. Nothing to do with just this build.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Alun wrote: »

To be fair, the Italian ham market is a cuthroat one for sure.

Damn you. I'm standing by it.

cnocbui

Hurrache wrote: »

That's just a quote from a member of a residents association. It might as well be made up without showing where he got his number from.

It was at a hearing. Does the article quote Apple responding to that and calling it a nonsense? Didn't think so.

Here's another one:

It is understood that the data centre, which will come online in 2017, will have a 6MW requirement and this will grow to 30MW when it is fully operational. This could grow to 240MW in 10 to 15 years’ time.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/apple-data-centre-athenry-galway

240 MW is 5% of the current system demand in this country as I am typing this.

theyoungchap

Bad week for Athenry, all over the papers twice for very wrong reasons.
Last time I had heard of the place before this was at 6 nations match....

wexie

knipex wrote: »

They put huge demands on power but from what I can see provide very little employment or long term benefit to the country, especially considering the potential impact on out power grid.

The only potential long term impact to our power grid is that it's likely to end up being upgraded....

I'm not sure how you could possibly see that as a bad thing?

Microsoft have ended up building their very own power station as they couldn't wait for the grid to be upgraded to provide the power they needed.

https://www.independent.ie/business/microsoft-forced-to-build-dublin-power-station-to-service-huge-data-centre-36137561.html

I'm sure Eirgrid will eventually get around to it.

Mrs OBumble

Pelvis wrote: »

150 jobs were to be permanent.

But where were they based? Not that many networj engineers want to live in Athenry and the work can be done remotely.

cnocbui

weldoninhio wrote: »

Oisin Collins, representing a residents group, said Apple would be the largest private user of electricity in the State, if it were to expand its presence to the predicted level over the next 15 years.

It would use 300MW of power, which is 8pc of the national capacity and more than the daily entire usage of Dublin city. He questioned whether the impact on the national grid had been fully assessed.

So if was to build a further 7 data centres in the future. Nothing to do with just this build.

Nope. Just the one data centre which was set to be expanded as the need arose.

cnocbui

cnocbui wrote: »

Well could explain the location of existing data centres in Ireland that were not located in the middle of nowhere then?

It's about 15 mins from Galway city, hardly the middle of no where. It's an ideal location, the issue is the planning process which should fast track this type of thing and have it done extremely fast.

Cantona's Collars

wexie wrote: »

I think it's absolutely disgraceful that this was allowed to happen.

But I'd have to agree with you at least a little bit that it doesn't seem like to most logical spot to build a flagship data center.

Having said that I haven't seen much of the reasoning behind picking that location.

The owner of the land was Coillte so Apple had only one landowner to negotiate with. It was tucked away in the landscape and would be surrounded by trees so little or no visual impact on the landscape and of course the weather.
3 people with dubious vested interests managed to hold up planning for 3 years and go against the wants of pretty much the whole population of the area. I hope they are proud of themselves.

Doctors room ghost

Hurrache wrote: »

Was the land zoned industrial or commercial? Personally I don't see the issue with it, especially given the 2 examples I already provided.

The land was a swamp and the people of Athenry would welcome the development with open arms.the town of Athenry is in desperate need for development of any kind with an ever growing population.they won’t let in aldi or Lidl all that’s in it is one mafia supermarket with a monopoly strong hold.loughrea is 40 times the town Athenry is and it’s a crying shame things have gone like that

wexie

cnocbui wrote: »

It was at a hearing. Does the article quote Apple responding to that and calling it a nonsense? Didn't think so.

Here's another one:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/apple-data-centre-athenry-galway

It is understood that the data centre, which will come online in 2017, will have a 6MW requirement and this will grow to 30MW when it is fully operational. This could grow to 240MW in 10 to 15 years’ time.

240 MW is 5% of the current system demand in this country as I am typing this.

Could....potentially....grow to....in 10 to 15 years time.....

So there wouldn't actually have been an issue currently?

And to be honest....if our power grid doesn't see any upgrades in the next 10 to 15 years will be in big trouble one way or another.