Cost of national data centre in Co Kildare rises to €64m

The projected cost of the new government data centre in Co Kildare has risen by more than 10 per cent to €64 million in the past two years.

The rise in estimated costs for the centre, due to be completed in 2025, was revealed by Minister for State at the Department of Communications Ossian Smyth.

Originally mooted in 2018, the data centre will replace several smaller data centres, including one of those maintained by the Revenue Commissioners.

The costs were projected at €57 million when the National Development Plan was unveiled in October 2021.

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The centre will be located on the Backweston Campus, between Celbridge and Leixlip. The Office of Public Works (OPW) said the shared government data centre would allow the State to secure operations and future-proof the reliable delivery of essential services to the public.

The centre will be designed to be powered by renewable energy from a potential future solar farm on site, according to the OPW.

“The Government’s digital infrastructure requires significant upgrading and rationalisation,” said the OPW in a statement. “A shared data centre will allow the State to secure operations and future-proof the reliable delivery of essential services to the public, from social welfare and agfood communications to Revenue and many other schemes and payments.

“By pooling resources in a facility that will operate the latest free cooling technology, the new centre will be at least twice as efficient as existing public service facilities, resulting in reduced power usage and pressure on electricity supply.”

Mr Smyth said the cost escalation was due to many factors including inflation and specification. He emphasised that the data centre was very small compared with commercial operators and would replace several smaller data centres based in Dublin.

“There was a requirement for a data centre for Revenue data. The State decided strategically to put certain other super critical data like forensic crime data on the same system,” he said.

The State Laboratory and Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) are also located on the campus as are several facilities operated by the Department of Agriculture and Food.

The main contractor for the centre is Designer Group, the Dublin-based specialist engineering and construction firm, founded by Michael Stone. The businessman was at the centre of a controversy involving Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe over election expenses. He provided a van and workmen to erect posters but the costs of the assistance was not included in Mr Donohoe’s returns.

Mr Smyth said that compared with the data centres that large technology firms had located in Ireland, the government data centre was very small.

“We are replacing a data centre in Dublin Castle with one in Kildare. It is very small. It’s only about 1 per cent of the size of a commercial data centre like Facebook would have.”

Mr Smyth, a Green Party TD for Dún Laoghaire, also emphasised that its energy usage would not damage the environment, or impact on security of supply.

“We had a policy on data centres in 2018, which came from the Department of Enterprise and Trade, which was all about getting more data centres with no reference to energy security or climate at all.

“We wrote a policy to make sure that data centres are not damaging to the environment and allow us to have an ability to meet our targets without destabilising our grid. That means that all data centres in the future must have renewable energy supply, and have a full backup in case they go down so that they can run without any interruption to the supply,” he said.

“The Commission on the Regulation of Utilities [CRU] has specified that in any case where there’s a shortage of power, the data centres would be the first to be turned off and they would switch to their backup power.”