Plans by social media giant facebook to build a €200m data centre at Clonee have been given the green light by Meath County Council.
A recently established company called Runways Information Services Limited, based in Dublin, applied for permission for the development at lands, believed to cover around 220 acres, within the townlands of Portan, Gunnocks and Clonee, bounded by the R147, the Kilbride Road, The Mayne and Damastown Industrial Park.
The data centre campus is to be built in two phases within ten years.
The first phase will involve construction of two data centre buildings containing eight data halls with a gross floor area of 50,000 sq metres and with a data capacity of 36mW per building, together with associated mechanical and electrical spaces and parking.
Phase two will include the construction of a third single storey data centre building containing four data halls with a gross floor area of 25,400 sq metres and a data capacity of 36mW and ancillary works.
Facebook is reported to be investing over €200 million in only its second European data centre. The company has a base in Sweden already.
