Apple will be grilled by Irish National Planning Board over €850m data centre plan

Apple's plan to build a €850m (£658m) data centre in Galway, Ireland is to face fresh scrutiny in an oral hearing next month, following a number of environmental objections – including disturbance to bats and badgers. The 30,000m2 data centre is intended to house European Apple consumers' iStuff. Apple had expected that the …

[Chris Tierney]

We will call it

Operation Apple Tree

[Matt Bridge-Wilkinson]

I don't know why but this made me think of:

"wafer thin mint Sir?"

"There is room", is why we are slowly or some may argue rapidly, eroding away our forests away across the planet.

[tmTM]

Re: I don't know why but this made me think of:

I was thinking more:

"There is room", said Councillor Peter Feeney while he was stuffing brown envelopes of cash into his briefcase.

[Cynical Observer]

Clearly Apple will have to rely upon their core supporters. Just need to make sure that no one Cox it up.

[PNGuinn]

@ Cynical Observer

Spartan work there, my boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only place available to build it..

... is in the middle of a forest? (start in the middle, build roads to it, then along roads build other buildings, than new roads among buildings, and so on... until the forest is no more)

No abandoned industrial areas to reuse? They are a little more expensive to clear than a forest, aren't there? But it also mean more jobs...

300 construction workers? From where and for how long? And after?

[Number6]

With all those badgers there won't be mushroom for anything else...

[Dan 55]

Down with non-native foreign climate immigrant trees

Remember to put a handful of native trees in the company garden.

[Mage]

It is the middle of a 500 acre wood

Criminal then.

Ireland is not densely populated. It's got plenty of suitable land with nothing much on it and one of the LOWEST levels of forestation in Europe.

Greed by however owns wood?

Irresponsible of Planning if they allow it.

Irresponsible of Apple to want it there.

There are also plenty of idle Industrial estate units.

[Doctor Syntax]

As a non-native (?Sitka spruce) plantation it would always have been intended to be harvested by clear felling after a number of years. From what I can see on Google maps a large portion of it has already been felled. If it was previously woodland the real environmental offence would have been the plantation itself. I wonder what the local objections were to the existing adjacent golf course.

[To Mars in Man Bras!]

Puckering Paddies

*"...I wonder what the local objections were to the existing adjacent golf course.."*

Probably about as vociferous as those raised near Port Salainn in Co. Donegal where the rucksack-toting, shorts-wearing visitor approaching the sand dunes is met with a wall of signs of the; "No Tents", " No Overnight Parking", "No Swimming", "No Making Sandcastles", "This Is A Protected Area", "These Dunes Are Fragile", " Don't Even Look At The Dunes" variety —about 50 metres away from where a huge expanse of said dunes has been concreted and turfed over to create a stars and stripes festooned "Sycophantic Seamus's Big Ol' Irish Yee-Haw American Style Golf Center and US Visitor Fellating Facility"

I've said it before and I'll say it again; if you think the UK's playing poodle to the US is nauseating, don't ever visit Ireland, without packing a large supply of sick bags.

[Alan Bourke]

Re: Puckering Paddies

Yeah we definitely have a 'three bags full sir' attitude to the Yanks, but in fairness US tourism and investments like this are about the only game in employment town in a lot of the west.

[steve-b]

There's always one Granny Smith saying "wont someone think of the wildlife"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the site is/was a tree farm

Apple had previously said the Galway project "will recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees and restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest.

So they are going to use land that was used for "growing and harvesting non-native trees", i.e. a lumber/paper farm of some sort, and restore native trees to the area they aren't building on. Sounds like a win to me, since it is now a "forest" in name only if the trees aren't native and have probably been planted in rows.

Likely the locals want some assurance that the critters living in it will have minimal disruption, i.e. they remove the non-native trees in phases to allow time to get the native trees established instead of clear cutting the whole thing and taking years for the native trees to grow large enough to support the critters.

[Mage]

Re: Sounds like the site is/was a tree farm

Even better, grow native trees there and put their data centre on one of MANY underutilized fully serviced industrial estates in West or Mid West.

Perhaps that's too industrial for "posh" Apple.

It was good enough for DEC in the 1970s.

I'm not inclined to believe any promise regarding developments in Ireland, especially by an Builder, Developer or Politician*, nor Apple, masters of spin.

[*see Anglo Irish Bank, West Link, Developments on M50, Ghost Estates etc etc]

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Sounds like the site is/was a tree farm

'since it is now a "forest" in name only if the trees aren't native and have probably been planted in rows.'

Calling non-native plantations forests is a prime example of getting rid of the difficult bit in the title.

[Oengus]

Native Apples

Apple had previously said the Galway project "will recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees and restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest.

I didn't know the Apple was native to Ireland...

[Ru']

What will Winnie-the-Pooh think of all this?

[Warm Braw]

Statistically, there should be 5 Winnie-the-Poohs in a forest of that size, though as a non-native species their future, too, may be in jeopardy.

[Barry Mahon]

Regarding empty industrial estates. Presumably Apple's argument is that they want the centre to be in a place with a "good" environment, cool, damp, etc., diffuses the heat. OTOH there are lots of data centres in Ireland because of its damp, cool, climate.

In Ireland, Apple is god, so, planning will be given.

Recent figures show that, even with the tax fiddles, 80% of corporation tax is contributed by non-national entities.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

A Forest