Amazon pulls plug on €300m plant in Dublin that would have created 500 jobs

Eva Osborne

Amazon has pulled the plug on a new plant in Dublin, which would have created hundreds of jobs.

The tech company failed to secure an electricity connection, leading to it abandoning the plans for the €300 million manufacturing facility in Ballycoolin.

It comes after EirGrid warned of serious pressure on the national grid as demand increases.

The facility, which had planning permission from Fingal County Council, would have manufactured server racks used in data centres.

Amazon said it is disappointed the project cannot proceed, but that it hopes to be able to make other high-tech investments elsewhere in Ireland.

Newstalk business correspondent Joe Lynam, said the 23,000sq/m site would have created more than 500 jobs.

"It's not a data centre, it's building these rack facilities for data centes, but it wasn't going to use as much energy as a data centre would," he said.

"The National Development Plan, only out this week, is talking about €100 billion in the next five years in infrastructure. The need is absolutely urgent.

"It's not gonna go ahead now and a lot of people will be saying: 'This is outrageous that this money, this investment, is just walking away'."

ESRI energy economist, Dr Muireann Lynch, said the grid has been put under severe pressure in Dublin from data centres.

"Which has pushed the demand in Dublin to unsustainable levels. However, it's not purely about the data centres," she explained.

"We've had growing demand from all sorts of sectors and just haven't been able to keep up on the infrastructure side, and I suppose the chickens are coming home to roost at this point."