Aontú TD for Mayo Paul Lawless has welcomed the news today that the data centre planned for Killala has had its planning permission officially overturned by An Coimisiún Pleanála.
Speaking today Deputy Lawless said: “This is certainly welcome news for County Mayo. Ireland is being used as Europe’s data centre. In 2024 data centres used 22% of all electricity in Ireland. That was more than all urban homes combined. Data centres are placing huge pressure on the grid and therefore pushing up electricity prices. They are also paying less per unit of electricity than regular households”.
Deputy Lawless continued: “In recent years we’ve seen a number of planning applications go in across the west of Ireland for enormous wind turbines, wind farms and solar farms. These developments are being foisted upon us in rural Ireland because of the amount of electricity data centres are using”.
“The national grid is not able to handle the electricity generated by wind turbines and as such across the country many turbines have to be switched off when the grid has reached capacity. Not only this, but the government is using tax-payers money to compensate these wind farm companies and pay them for the electricity they are not producing. It is scandalous. I’m glad An Coimisiún Pleanála has seen sense here, and I understand one of the main reasons why planning has been reversed is because the developer had not been able to demonstrate that there was a connection agreement to the grid, and was not able to prove that the grid had sufficient capacity to provide power to the data centre. I hope this planning refusal will stop or slow the extreme push by developers for so many windfarms across the county”, concluded Lawless.
