Not exactly the spam example, but Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the potato famine. The good farmland went to cattle and things like that for export.

So we should allocate electricity to less productive uses to benefit people the most?

People should just keep driving inefficient cars rather than having gas prices increase so they can evaluate whether getting a more efficient car makes sense for them.

Employees of construction companies, electricity companies and the data center, among others, all get paid, no?

> So what really matters for Ireland (and any country/region hosting these data centers) is whether the benefits in terms of capital spending + the few ongoing jobs created outweighs any increased electricity and environmental costs faced by everyone else

Exactly, which is WHY IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have been a data center first policy in Ireland since the mid-2000s.

Heck, the only reason Microsoft and Google ended up in Dublin was because the IDA clubbed employment creation with data center construction in the 2000s.

Ireland in the 1990s and 2000s was roughly comparable to Greece developmentally back then and also suffered a Greek style economic meltdown from 2008-13. The only reason Ireland didn't stagnate like Greece was because of how business and tech FDI friendly Ireland was.

This might just be my bubble, but us there that much AI being used for girlfriends/scams, or even reels these days?

Most people I know use it as a tool to do things for them, technical or otherwise.

Even the loneliest people I know don't want to talk to a clanker unless there's at least a pretense of work being done.

No doubt, there's always some bad with the good. The counter is to ask about the proportions.

It's actually a sliding scale of badness, but for the sake of argument let's pop a marker on that imaginary badness line and call everything worse than our marker "bad" and everything better than it "good". Let's also assume such objective criteria exist. This is a lot of assumptions!

Now, assuming we got this far, is the "bad" 1% of the sum? Or 90%? 99%? Because we just don't know, I'm going to make another assumption and assume it's a tiny minority.

We still sell knives even though they can stab. Mostly though, knives do other knife things. And we have police and courts to deal with the bad uses.

data center = girlfriend bots = meth lab is a pretty wild connection to make.

Theres no reason for AI hate to bleed over to Data Center hate.

I really cant be stuffed defending AI. It either succeeds or it doesnt. But we get so much value from Data Centers and there's basically no one lauding them as an industry. Its like people waking up one morning and hating trains.

Its like people just discovered they existed yesterday and hate them for no reason.

For example, this is from another article in the The Irish Times:

"Data centres accounted for almost a quarter of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year, up from 5 per cent in 2015, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Tuesday, amid continuing public debate around the strain the sector is putting on Irish energy infrastructure."

A total of 7,663 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity from Ireland's expanding grid capacity was used by data centres in 2025, up 10 per cent from 6,973GWh in 2024.

Consumption by all other users, including households, rose by just 2 per cent over the same period, the statistics agency said.

In total, data centres alone accounted for 23 per cent of metered electricity consumption last year, up from just over a fifth in 2024.

The latest CSO figures also reveal that data centres increased their electricity consumption on a quarterly basis, from 291 GWh in the first quarter of 2015 to 1,991 GWh in the fourth quarter of last year."

These are just facts. The aricle is not arguing for or against anything

But HN commenters get triggered by such reporting

That's a red flag, IMHO

Ignoring the taxes part.

Some of the assumption seems valid such as additional infrastructure cost. But I wonder if that is much of anything. I would assume the DC actually paying for the connection. If that is the case additional capex is not spread across consumer.

The other question is that DC provides a decent baseline for electricity usage. Generally speaking that is a good thing. So it is not an additional burden as implied here.

Third being DC is still paying for the electricity. It is not getting subsidised pricing. They may be getting discount wholesale price due to its volume. But it is not like they are selling at a loss while the rest are covered by consumers.

Generally speaking I don't understand why everyone is suddenly against DC. It may be an issue if power generation hasn't been able to keep up. But in most cases so far that is not what is happening here.

For some reason Ireland's government is offering favorable conditions for datacenter construction.

Don't you ever stop to wonder why?

> Who pays for that? Not the data center

uh... how? they do pay for what they use.

This is common for teachers in many US states too -- spend X years teaching where we need you the most and we cover your degree.

In the US a teaching degree might be $50,000, and medical degree might be $500,000. I'm not sure I want my state government covering half a million in education costs for one person... I know that we need doctors but I'd want to see some ROI numbers to justify such a high expense.

That is essentially how it works in the US as well thanks to public service loan forgiveness for physicians.

Yep, that's common in many countries for doctors. Not much for anything else(maybe teachers too) and how much X is good enough is debatable.

Certainly common resources are very vulnerable to incorrect pricing and profiteering.

In the past there are many cases where local populations were deprived from their vital needs because some king/queen/sultan/khan etc needed that more.

He's talking about highly educated doctors taking jobs in private clinics instead of working in public hospitals for less.

I think its obvious from the context what kind of plastic surgery, the vanity one.

It's not important whose fault it is, I am sure that the datacenter people believe that they got such a good deal and everything is peachy.

You are entitled to a benefit from your tax dollars being spent. Otherwise, it's just theft.

Irelands big pull to these companies is to not tax them as much as other countries.

Even in the hypothetical that datacenters would double Ireland’s GDP what real positive impact would it have if they pay zero taxes?

California is not a great place to build data centers. If you need to service CA, there are better options

I am going to assume based on the fact that the article is about Ireland, and Ireland uses the euro, the commenter is in Ireland

I'm in the PNW and I pay 11c/kWh (well, I would, if I didn't have solar). Seattle is 13c, King County averages 16c. Where are you paying 5c/kWh? That's exceptionally cheap.

You pay $0.05/kWh? That’s insanely low and I though I had it good at $0.1/kWh.

Paying 50 cents here in California. Running the electric oven costs literal dollars. However, this isnt new. Im hoping the data centers bring more attention to our state run cartel and push it over a tipping point.

A thread in which yet another American learns how ludicrously cheap the cost of living is in USA despite the constant neverending moaning.

My power is USD$0.271/kWh and I'm nowhere near Ireland.

What kind of question is that? Without knowing anything about the person's geography or local cost of solar, how can you make such a bold assessment of affordability? I live in New Zealand where the capital cost of solar is very expensive and the climate is OK-not-great for solar generation. Even at 30c/kwh the payback (without batteries) is still 15 to 20 years. Not an obvious choice, especially as the capital cost is still declining.

The Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

Being poor is expensive.

depends on where you are. In some parts of California you are out $10-20k just for the permitting and panel upgrade.

Then there are proposals to charge homeowners based on insalled capacity. Part of NEM 3.0 in California was a $8/month per KW, but it was defeated. Who is to say it wont be back in 4.0? that would be about a $1000/yr fee for a 10 kw home system.

Yet they're happy to take nuclear-generated electricity from France...

- To fix these two planks you take a hammer and a nail ... - NO! My uncle hit himself with a hammer real hard last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we use glue? - Yes, it will be more expensive, less efficient ... - NO! My niece inhaled glue last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we ... <Light goes out. Conversation continues in a darkness>

Editorials are a thing. This is not an editorial. It's structured as a news report.

It's called a value judgment and an emotionally charged tone. That's certainly a form of editorial but IMO not the good kind. If an outlet seeks to advocate for a cause it ought to do so in a well reasoned manner and with a professional tone.

>Journalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda.

How do you figure? Surely it becomes propaganda for the opinion?

Journalists are not supposed to let opinions show in their reporting, that’s why editorials exist.

there's an unnatural amount of doomerism against datacenters, of exactly this kind. It's pretty obviously astroturfed.

That opinion should be informed by facts and data. This opinion isn't really informed by anything except scientifically illiterate propaganda. That's the problem. Journalists larping as experts in something that they have absolutely no expertise or even the basic scientific background to understand. The amount of misinformation on topics surrounding energy generation is absolutely criminal and journalists are far and away the biggest spreaders of misinformation on this topic. If I could, I would make a journalist without scientific or engineering credentials talking about this topic a felony on par with murder. After all, they are causing significant amounts of misery in the 3rd world with their lies.

> objectively reporting facts?

I believe so. They're not known for neutrally reporting them, which is different.

They basically re-report press releases. I've dealt with The Register as well as their sister publications back when I was still in product (especially during shudder RSA).

The Reg keeps a snarky tone, but immediately becomes deferential once a vendor begins a content campaign with them.

They also operated a bot account on HN for years that was spamming Register articles for almost 3 years and accumulated 66K karma until I and a couple others complained about it.

Yeah, but Ireland has a looser regulatory environment where it’s easier for a data centre operator to buy off the relevant government regulators.

> data centers do not belong in Ireland...

Data Centers have been the cornerstone of Ireland's economy since the mid-2000s when the IDA began wooing tech FDI specifically by calling out data center expansion opportunities within the EU [0].

Also, if Europeans actually wish to have a sovereign tech industry, they need domestic compute capacity.

Complaining about American tech dependency and then immediately complaining about steps to build EU tech sovereignty is literally a contradiction.

[0] - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-pote...

It's not misappropriation. Other countries within the EU could be much more business incorporation and FDI friendly, and IDA Ireland tends to be one of the more competent trade promotion agencies within the EU.

Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP [0]?

Edit: can't reply

> Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such

Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% but drops to 6.25% if it's qualified R&D and IP income with an added 35% R&D tax credit.

It's attractive, but CEE states like Poland and Czechia can (and often do) match that.

The biggest attraction for Ireland is the fact that everyone speaks English in Ireland, and Irish tax and corporate legal firms have worked with American firms since the 1990s, which reduces the headache.

> Or to 0.005% if you're Apple

Which ended in 2014, yet Ireland still remains attractive for tech FDI.

At the end of the day, Ireland executed much better than it's developmental peers in the 1990s (Spain, Czechia, Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Greece, Argentine, and Libya in 1991 based on HDI) simply because it was much more business friendly.

[0] - https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/ireland-digi...

Nobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity. They host them there for tax reasons. You can bet your firstborn these datacenters are only the exact size that is the minimum allowed by tax law, not a square millimeter more.

Yes, datacenters are critical internet infrastructure. But in Ireland they're more like a sailing ship with the sails mounted underwater, because that's cheaper for tax reasons.

Tapes. Trackloads of them. Ferries with lorries with tapes. You know, the European GDPR compliant way. /s

Maybe we ought to take away society's Spotify etc. and go back to trading cassettes.

I predict it will last all of two days.

You see the mentally ill chaos unfold within hours when DNS or a CDN goes down. Imagine taking their datacenter-dependent toys away for more than a day.

How will they navigate job interviews (in between datacenter protests) without relying on ChatGPT to feed them answers?

Sounds like a circular dependency to me.

Some data centers, sure. 23% of the country's energy worth? I don't think so. Training LLMs is not critical digital infrastructure.

Is 22% of energy generation of a country needed to serve services needed for that country? I mean it starts sounding like blockchain at that point.

It seems like local power generation is OK too in Alberta, meaning Natural Gas or Solar on-site without needing to connect it to the grid.

Quebec has a larger grid and lower rates due to its abundant hydroelectricity.

Ontario's relatively high costs are from the supply mix which is about 50% nuclear, 30% hydro, 10% wind, 10% gas.

Residential kWh as delivered is currently (no pun intended) about 12 US cents which is a bit high if you're used to Midwestern or Alberta coal but those in California are probably envious.

Energy prices are cheaper in Canada as a whole than the US which is cheaper than Europe. While China it's still significantly cheaper that those since they invested in every sort of energy instead of fighting it.

The post above seems to point to Alberta as the best value prop.

Sure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.

Or Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)

Better than kicking the can down the road. Energy is effectively always going to be needed.

In 20 years time the same response will be spouted, it will make you wish you did something 20 years before when it was originally discussed.