Ministers Heather Humphreys TD and Pat Breen TD have turned the sod on Google’s €150 million expansion of its data centre at Grange Castle, Dublin. The new facility will create about 400 jobs at peak during its construction and take close to 16 months to complete, by which time the data centre will bring Google’s total capital investment in Ireland to €1 billion since 2003.
A €350m investment in construction and operations
The announcement was followed by the release of a report by Copenhagen Economics into the impact of Google’s data centres on the Irish economy, which found that for the years 2011-2017, the facility represented: a €350 million direct investment in construction and operations; a €400 million contribution to Ireland’s GDP (average €55 million per year); and a total of 4,900 jobs supported both directly and indirectly (average 700 jobs per year).
Terence McGoff, engineering director at Google, said: “I’m really delighted to announce that we’ve started to break ground on the new addition to our facility here in south county Dublin. Our data centres are essential to our operations both in Ireland and across the larger EMEA region, allowing consumers and business to use our cloud-based tools and software far more efficiently and effectively.
"This investment shows our continued commitment to Ireland as a key driver for the whole EMEA region, and we’re proud to see that total capital investment by Google in Ireland has reached a total of €1 billion since we first opened an office here in Dublin 15 years ago.”
Denis Browne, Google’s EU regional data centre Lead, said: “Dublin is a key site in our family of European data centres, which provide the critical infrastructure to keep cloud-based services such as Gmail, Maps, and YouTube running efficiently across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Designed to be highly energy-efficient
"Our data centres are designed to be highly energy-efficient, for example our data centre here in Dublin uses advanced air-cooling technologies taking advantage of our country’s 'temperate climate' to regulate the temperature of the servers.
"Efforts such as this are vital to our ongoing environmental initiatives such as our recent global achievement of purchasing enough renewable energy to match all the electricity we consumed last year, as well as maintaining our long-established carbon neutral status, something we’re very proud to have held continuously since 2007.”
Heather Humphreys TD, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation said: “This €150 million data centre expansion brings the company’s total investment in its Irish data centres alone to €500 million, and its capital expenditure to almost €1 billion.”
Peter Byrne, CEO, South Dublin Chamber, said: “The presence of these data centres has provided a breath of life to South Dublin County - as well as bringing vital direct employment to the area, they also support indirect employment via local spending on goods and services.
"In addition, Google has an excellent relationship with the local community and actively supports local community projects and NGOs, such as the Inspiring the Future initiative with the South Dublin County Partnership. We’re delighted with Google’s continued commitment to the area via the expansion of their data centre here.”