This week, we reported that tech giant Amazon scrapped plans to build a big industrial plant in Dublin because it could not secure an electricity supply for the €300 million project.
The move has closed off the prospect of more than 500 jobs being created in the proposed plant at Ballycoolin in northwest Dublin, near the Co Meath border, where Amazon already has a large base.
Arthur Beesley reports that Amazon stopped the investment when ESB Networks said there was no scope to provide an electricity connection within the company’s time frame because of constraints in power networks in that area.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on Friday he planned to “delve into” the circumstances of “this specific case”.
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The news came days after the Cabinet signed off on a €100 billion plan to boost national infrastructure between now and 2030. In his column this weekend, Cliff Taylor writes there has been a building crisis of confidence in corporate headquarters in the United States about Ireland’s ability to deliver in energy and water infrastructure.
Taylor writes that the Fiscal Council has estimated that Ireland’s infrastructure is 20 to 25 per cent behind other richer European Union countries.
“In this context, the recent growth rate of the economy has been remarkable. But Ireland is now running hard into the infrastructural buffers.”
The National Development Plan aims to tackle these deficits, with specific allocations made towards them. Uisce Éireann will get €2 billion in equity funding in an effort to build out projects supporting the Government target of 300,000 homes by 2030 and another €2.5 billion for large-scale infrastructure. There’s €2 billion put aside to kick start Metrolink construction and while there’s €1.5 billion for ESB and €2 billion for EirGrid. Jack Horgan-Jones outlines the main points of the plan here.
Taylor notes that “the head-wrecking details, including how to deliver it all” are notably absent from the plan. This is hardly reassuring given “Ireland has struggled to deliver on the scale of promised investment in recent years; Covid was a factor, for sure, but the State missed opportunities to cash in on a time of fiscal plenty. Now, it plans to boost investment plans just as the outlook is getting uncertain. It is necessary – but it also carries some risk.”
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