The Irish construction industry appears to be booming once again, particularly in terms of data centre builds, which are happening on a larger scale and at a more rapid rate than ever before.
“Technology is one area where Ireland has done incredibly well, having developed strong capabilities and competencies in terms of building mission-critical infrastructure,” says Stephen Hughes, department manager, construction, at Enterprise Ireland, during his opening address at the Global Data Centre Forum in Dublin this week.
Enterprise Ireland is a development organisation that aims to help Irish companies keep ahead of today’s pace of change, and to deliver competitive advantage around the world.
Hughes says Ireland is expanding its capabilities, creating a platform for Irish contractors all around Europe to work for major companies in France, Holland, Canada, the US and even Africa.
In Africa’s case, it is thanks to the burgeoning hyperscale activity in the region that Irish data centre builders sees many opportunities.
Dermot Reidy, senior market advisor, construction, at Enterprise Ireland adds that Ireland’s focus on high tech exports, such as power generation and distribution, adds some four billion euro gross to the country's coffers annually.
Moreover, according to Enteprise Ireland, the country is the second largest exporter of computer and IT services in the world, driven by a highly creative and talented workforce, an open economy and a competitive corporate tax environment.
But it's not just outside of the country that the industry is booming. Ireland has become the European data centre location of choice for giants such as IBM, AWS, Microsoft and Google, and is now well positioned to becoming a global cloud centre. The country is seen as an attractive location for the facilities for a range of reasons, including the cool climate, which reduces running costs for heat-generating computers, its connectivity to the US via transatlantic data cables, and a favourable data-protection regime for tech multinationals.
Over and above the hyperscale providers, smaller colocation facilities are also on the rise, says Reidy.
Ireland has many smaller colocation providers with a good capacity and turnovers in the region of a billion euro, and more being built as the country attempts to fill a pipeline to accommodate the vast amounts of data that are stored within its borders.
“Already, 40% of the data in Europe is held in Ireland,” he adds. “This is largely due to its close position to the trans-Atlantic cables, as latency is incredibly important when it comes to data centres. This close proximity makes it one of the best-connected countries worldwide for its storage infrastructure."
For this reason, organisations around the world opt to host in Ireland because they know they will have the connectivity, low latency and reliability they require, he adds.
“Looking geographically, it is easy to forecast where data centres will be built and where they will grow in popularity,” he concludes.
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