Dublin city centre, Ireland transatlantic cables and hyperscalers like AWS, Ireland’ s data centres power cloud services for millions, supporting 21,000 direct jobs and an ICT ecosystem, employing more than 180,000 people across construction, engineering and specialist services.
However,“ that level of success comes with side effects,” Matthew notes.“ In Dublin, there’ s been grid congestion, long planning disputes and tough questions about energy use, just as AI workloads are ramping up,” he says.
Europe’ s data centre electricity demand could more than double to over 230TWh by 2035 and for Ireland, that projection is significant, because its data centres could account for 30 % of national electricity consumption by 2030, the highest share in the EU.
“ Ireland is both a warning and a blueprint,” Matthew says.“ It shows what happens when digital growth runs ahead of infrastructure and regulatory clarity but it also shows how to reset the framework.”
This reset is embodied in the Large Energy User Action Plan( LEAP), published in 2026. LEAP is the Irish government’ s plan that sets out 17 enabling actions aimed at reopening the market to large energy users( LEUs) – including data centres – under new conditions.
It promotes a plan-led approach where major investments such as
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