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Apple defeats one man's quest to stop an Irish data center

DUBLIN — It isn’t often that a data center elicits an emotional response but that’s what happened Thursday when Ireland’s High Court ruled in favor of Apple, which wants to build a $1 billion data center in the west of Ireland.

More than a dozen residents of the tiny west Ireland village of Athenry made the 250-mile round trip to Dublin to hear Justice Paul McDermott throw out complaints that Ireland’s planning authorities had not sufficiently considered the impacts that Apple’s huge data center would have.

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The decision paves the way for Apple to build up to eight data halls on the outskirts of the town, potentially employing hundreds of residents. “I think Athenry is going to go wild tonight,” Paul Keane, one of the organizers of the Apple for Athenry support group, told VICE News after the verdict.

“We are delighted with the judge’s decision, it is the right decision for the west of Ireland and hopefully this is it, hopefully, there won’t be grounds for appeal and we can move on,” he said.

“I think Athenry is going to go wild tonight.”

Apple says its data center — which will power its App Store, iMessage and Apple Music services — will provide 300 jobs during the construction phase and 150 permanent jobs once the entire project is completed. Athenry residents and lawmakers believe it will spark further investment in the region which has suffered from poor jobs growth in recent years.

But the battle is not over yet.

READ: One man in this tiny town could derail Apple’s plans for Europe

Allan Daly, an American ex-pat who led the objections to the development, told VICE New he was “disappointed” with the ruling but would nt say whether he would appeal the judgment until he had time to digest the written decision. He has however in the past indicated that he would appeal the judgment if the decision went against him.

Apple’s legal team said the company was “very eager to proceed” with the project, so the judge only gave the parties involved until Monday to decide if they would be appealing his decision.

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Apple said it did not have any further comment on the ruling.

The saga of the Athenry data center has been dragging on for more than two years since Apple announced its intention to build the facility in February 2015. However objections by two local residents — claiming Apple’s environmental impact statement was insufficient and the company’s claims of using renewable energy were misleading — has mired the project in legal wrangling for several years.

The delay has also led to concerns that Ireland’s planning laws could discourage other technology companies from setting up similar projects in the country.

Indeed, just two weeks ago senior Apple representatives spoke to Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar expressing their concern about the project’s delay and warning that it could cloud Apple’s future investments in Ireland.

“If the word went out internationally that we have a planning system that doesn’t function efficiently, that would be a very negative day for Ireland,” Ciaran Cannon, a Fine Gael member of Parliament who represents Athenry, told VICE News outside the court.

Announced at the same time as the Irish data center, Apple’s other European data center in Denmark is already finished and about to come online — and it’s already planning to build a second data center there.

Ireland is seen as an ideal location for tech giants to establish data centers. Not only does the country have low corporate tax rates, it also possesses a temperate climate to naturally cools the huge amount of heat generated by the servers housed in data centers — and it will also soon be the only English-speaking member of the EU.

However a number of technology giants are now believed to be reconsidering plans to locate here, given the regulatory complications Apple has encountered. Chinese technology giant Alibaba was reported to be scouting Ireland as a location for its European data center but is now looking to the UK or Sweden.

Amazon, which already has data centers operational in Ireland, is seeking to build a new $1 billion data center project in Dublin, but it is also now facing further scrutiny from Ireland’s planning authority — after Daly also objected on the basis of environmental concerns.

The Irish government has indicated that it will reform its planning laws to fast-track the application process for projects like Apple’s data centers — though critics like Daly suggest this will lead to even less consideration for the impact these developments will have.