Sir, – Dermot O’Rourke (Letters, January 8th) equates data centres with sewage treatment plants. This is a valid comparison. Both provide essential services that, while aesthetically unappealing, are operated for the benefit of the whole population. Sewage not directed to treatment centres would still be produced, but would be released into the environment in its raw state, damaging ecosystems and posing a risk to public health.
Data may not pose such a direct threat to nature or human life, but its poor handling poses risks to the security and integrity of data. As the hack on the HSE demonstrated, loss of data, even temporarily, can have drastic or even fatal impacts for individuals. The environmental benefits to be gained from centralising data processing are also significant, through the efficiencies and economies of scale that data centres confer with regard to energy management.
Mr O’Rourke observes that commercial data centres are operated for profit. The Irish State is probably the largest producer of data in the country and is perfectly capable of developing its own public non-for-profit data centres if it wished to do so. Many public sector bodies already operate their own localised data centres, and are increasingly aware of the spiralling costs of doing so. Indeed, energy consumption by these data centres is a particular concern for public sector bodies in light of climate and sustainability goals set for the public sector by Government. They are also wary of the fact that managing such a vital state asset in a piecemeal fashion is ripe with risk.
Finally, Mr O’Rourke observes that, were it commercially beneficial, foreign countries might ship their sewage to Ireland to be treated. Again, he is correct. Ireland, for example, ships enormous quantities of waste to other countries, often in the developing world, where disposal is cheaper.
While most nations desire to store data in their own country for security reasons (and most state bodies insist upon it), it is relatively common practice for secondary backups to be replicated to a different jurisdiction, to protect data against catastrophes such as war or terrorist attack, that might interrupt infrastructure at a national level. Irish data is routinely backed-up to other EU countries, and their data may be backed up here.
Given Ireland’s limited capacity for energy generation, the potential for overdevelopment of this service is a valid concern. Ireland has some of the highest energy, land, employee, and construction costs in the world, so the notion that Irish data centres are able to offer a cheaper product than lower-cost economies is dubious. However, Ireland’s reputation as stable and well-regulated means it is seen as a safe place to do business, and some foreign customers may believe it is worth paying a premium to back up their data here.
To my knowledge there is no evidence that data centres in Ireland primarily serve foreign customers, but it would be interesting to know how much of the available and planned capacity is allocated in this manner. It would also be interesting to know how data centre capacity per head of population in Ireland compares with other European countries, and how much of each country’s capacity is used for domestic and foreign customers. Given the need for foreign back-ups, one might expect the split to be 50/50 in each country in a totally equal market.
If it is the case that Ireland is taking a larger than expected share of the overall load, then EU rules on the free movement of goods and services would presumably make it difficult to develop regulations to deter this activity. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.