South Dublin County Council calls for end to fossil powered data centres

Friends of the Earth Ireland commends councillors who this evening [8th September] voted to successfully pass a motion to endorse a national moratorium on data centres in South Dublin County Council [1].

The show of support from the local community outside the council, as well as the number of councillors who supported the motion should serve as a timely reminder to Government that unlimited data centre expansion in Ireland has taken a toll on communities that we can no longer afford. The original motion, as proposed by Councillor Jess Spear, called on the Council to write to Darragh O’Brien, Minister for Climate, Environment and Energy, to request a complete national moratorium on further data centre expansion. The amended motion [1], as passed, now mandates South Dublin County Council to request a national moratorium on data centres unless they are renewably powered. 

 

While Friends of the Earth welcomes the spirit of the motion, we are concerned that data centre growth in Ireland has already outpaced the build out of renewables, and that without very strict rules around data centres’ access to renewables, big tech companies will continue to greenwash themselves by purchasing carbon credits in other countries while burning oil and gas at home. Friends of the Earth also calls for an end to Big Tech’s participation in genocide, and highlights that Microsoft data centres in Ireland have now been shown to host data used by Israel’s military to surveil civilians in Palestine [2].

 

Rosi Leonard, Data Centre Campaigner with Friends of the Earth Ireland commented: 

“South Dublin County Council is not just one of the data centre capitals of Ireland, but has become one the data centre capitals of the world. We commend the councillors who supported the original motion, particularly Councillor Jess Spear who proposed the original motion and Councillor Kay Keane, who seconded. We were disappointed to see Labour councillors in South Dublin not lend their support to the original motion, which was a position that the party endorsed as recently as last year’s election [3]. There was huge support from the community for a moratorium on data centres, and over the past few weeks of speaking to people in the area we have time and again heard people’s frustrations with Big Tech companies exploiting their community. We hope that local politicians will act on these concerns and demand an end to Big Tech’s capture of resources that are badly needed for house-building, energy security and basic climate justice."

Seán McLoughlin, Climate Policy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth commented: 

“Households around Clondalkin, Lucan and Tallaght have been at the coalface of unsustainable data centre expansion for years, with resources hoovered up for use by some of the most profitable tech companies in the world while communities are left to pick up the bill in terms of energy costs and creaking infrastructure. We hope that the support for a moratorium signalled by South Dublin County Council serves as a wake up call to Government that the current policy of allowing data centres to expand without limits is exploitative and needs to end. ”

 

McLoughlin continued: 

“We call on councils in areas of data centre development to start having these debates and support a moratorium on data centres so that we can build an energy system based on public need and the health of communities instead of facilitating the soaring profits of Big Tech.”

 

South Dublin County Council hosts dozens of data centres and Clondalkin alone hosts a quarter of the data centres in the country. At least three additional gas plants have been built in Clondalk’s Grange Castle Industrial Park in the last six years to serve rising energy demand due to data centres;  two of these have been built by data centre companies for their own use. Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland has raised concerns about the speed of their growth across the country, with demand from data centres rising over 400% in the last 10 years while demand from other sectors has remained stable. 

In 2024, Friends of the Earth commissioned research written by Professor Hannah Daly which showed how data centre demand had outpaced all the new renewable wind energy that had come on stream between 2017 and 2023, severely undermining our ability to move away from planet-wrecking fossil fuels and build out a cleaner and more resilient energy system.  Friends of the Earth calls for a national moratorium on data centres until they can show that they pose no threat to our legally binding carbon budgets, and are not facilitating social and environmental harms. 

 

ENDS

Notes:

1. The full text of the motion that was passed by South Dublin County Council is as follows:  
   “That this council resolves to write to the Minister for Climate and the Environment requesting a national moratorium on further data centre expansion, except for those data centres that are demonstrably powered by 100% renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, water, wave, and thermal energy."
2. For more on this see: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloud
3. See the relevant section on page 23 of Labour’s 2024 General Election Manifesto here: (https://labour.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Labour-Manifesto-2024-Building-Better-Together.pdf)