Support South Dublin County Councils' ban on Data Centers.

On the 9th of March, a motion to ban the building of further data centres in the constituency was put forward by Cllr Madeleine Johansson of People Before Profit and passed with the support of Sinn Fein, Social Democrats and several independent councillors.

There are several reasons councillors voted to ban further Data centres in the region:

Ireland currently holds 25% of Erops Data centres and South Dublin is quickly becoming the Data centre hub of Ireland with TikTok set to build one of the biggest Data Centres in Europe in Clondalkin which would use up the same amount of energy in one day then the whole of Clondalkin in three months.

It is estimated that 10% of Ireland’s electricity use is currently consumed by data centres and this is expected to increase to 25-30% by 2030. Data centres consume an average of 2% of electricity globally.

The continued building of new data centres is incompatible with any hope we have of reaching our climate targets in CO2 reductions.

It is clear from EirGrid’s initial statement in late 2021 that the grid in Dublin is struggling to cope, something more data centres would put a further strain on.

In addition to the large amount of energy used by data centres they also consume large amounts of water, again adding pressure on the capacity of water services in South Dublin where we are seeing large new housing developments.

Despite the motion passing however, there is now an attempt to overturn this decision.

Councillors will vote again on this on the 21st June when it will be either included in the plan or removed.

After that it will be sent to the Minister for Local Government Darragh O'Brien. We need the Minister and the government to support the democratic vote of local councillors and keep the ban in place. Please sign the petition.